Anastasia Forever

by Joy Preble

  Breathe, I tell myself. Just breathe. Figure this out. You are a powerful girl now. You’ve got witch powers. You can do this.

  Shit. I so cannot do this. I don’t even have my own body anymore. There’s nothing for me to breathe with.

  And then somewhere—in my brain? Tasha’s?—Baba Yaga’s voice speaks. Low and harsh, like tires rolling over gravel, but familiar. Insistent.

  Listen, Baba Yaga’s voice says. You will know what to do if you listen. Trust yourself. Learn. See what must be seen. Inside the insides, my girl. Listen to what is there.

  Does she really say this to me? It’s pretty crowded in my head right so I can’t say for sure. Maybe it’s her. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking. Maybe it’s a trick.

  But what’s my alternative? Sit here in this body and hope that somehow something drags me back out? That doesn’t seem to be the most solid plan.

  Onstage, Giselle finishes dying. The ballerina clutches her chest gracefully as she flutters to the floor. Is she dying of a heart attack? I would like to be clutching my chest right now, but Tasha doesn’t seem to want to do that. Is she in her head too, wondering about the chick who’s invaded her personal space?

  “Are you all right, my dear?” Viktor leans across Ethan. His breath smells like some weird combo of spearmint, herbal tea, and incense. His dark eyes grow darker, almost black. If I could shudder right now, I would. In my head, I do.

  A question in the middle of my freak-out: Does he know? Is he somehow aware things aren’t normal right now? Normal, of course, being a relative term for a guy who at this point in history was immortal and knew that Anastasia wasn’t dead—and was planning on keeping it that way.

  A guy like that would know everything, wouldn’t he?

  This is what I wonder while I try to calm down and listen. If I’m here for a reason, if this is happening for a reason—and at this point it better be—then maybe the Baba Yaga voice is right. Even if it’s just me telling myself what to do. Don’t freak out, Anne. Figure it out. You can do this.

  “Spasibo, kharasho,” is what comes out of my mouth.

  Terrific. Now I’m speaking Russian.

  “Pardon me,” I say then. “It is so easy to slip into Russian with both of you here. But I have promised myself that I will speak English. Be like these Londoners. I am well, thank you. There. That’s correct, yes?” Well, okay then. At least Tasha’s polite enough to translate for everyone. Including me.

  Ethan smiles at me. It’s such a sweet smile and so familiar that I’m caught off guard. For the tiniest second, things feel normal. It’s Ethan—tall, blue-eyed, hair just a little too long. Ethan same as always. Ethan who was kissing me in my room before all this extra craziness began. Ethan who I might be pissed at but who I think I love. Who I know loves me.

  He rises from his seat, pulls me up with him. There’s an odd look on his face, and that smile, I realize, has never quite reached those blue eyes.

  “I…we,” he begins. He clears his throat. Looks at me as though he’s seeing me for the first time.

  Viktor stands too. “We have a few minutes before the second act. Some refreshments, perhaps? The English do know how to make a fine cup of tea. Or maybe such a lovely evening calls for something a bit stronger. Of course, the lovely Madam Tasha can have whatever she desires.” He bows slightly, watching me—or I guess watching Tasha—so intently that if I was in charge of my body right now, I’d shiver. In my mind, I do.

  Ethan nods sort of blankly. He blinks. Stares at me again.

  “Tasha?” His voice rises in a question. “Tasha?”

  “Yes, dearest,” my mouth says. But inside Tasha’s head I’m watching Ethan, who is still standing very still, staring at me.

  Viktor’s eyes narrow. Slowly, he brushes an invisible piece of lint off his dark suit.

  My Ethan has to be here—stuck in past Ethan’s body. If I’m lucky, he’s realizing it. At least I hope he’s realizing it.

  But now what? How do I get out of this body? How do I let Ethan know I’m in here without also alerting Viktor, who already looks more than suspicious—which doesn’t surprise me. My wacky Russian ancestor may be evil and conniving, but he’s not stupid. Maybe he doesn’t know that two of us are actually four, but he’s got to realize that something strange is going on, even by his standards. I see him tilt his head like he’s thinking things over. I need to do something—the right something—before he catches on.

  As Tasha, I take Ethan’s hand. He twines his fingers with hers, and Viktor stands aside so we can walk ahead of him out of the box seats. Down the hall, I can see a small area set up to serve refreshments. In my mind—all that’s left of me—I call to him: Ethan, Ethan, Ethan. Can you hear me? Do you know what’s happened? If he hears me, there’s no indication.

  My head fills with Tasha—who, it seems, is pretty thirsty. This is the message her body is giving off. Her throat is dry and she’s looking forward to some hot tea. But not with milk, she’s thinking. Crazy English with their milky tea and biscuits. She wants hot, black tea with sugar, and she knows she’s going to be disappointed.

  Her thoughts come to me as images and words—a lot of Russian but some English too. I don’t understand every word, but I get the basics. If we get out of this in one piece and back in our own bodies, I’m going to thank Ethan for his love of the whole tea thing. Because without that, I’d be more lost in what Tasha is—

  Thinking. I’m not just thinking my own thoughts, am I? I’m hearing hers. At least the ones about tea. Have been hearing them all along. But they’ve been sort of fuzzy. Like a car radio when you’re in between cities and the station turns to static. But the tea craving—it’s coming in loud and clear.

  If I had my own body, I’d take deep breaths. But I’m just thoughts—hers and mine, and maybe Baba Yaga’s too. The truth I haven’t said aloud? The witch is always inside me now, some essence of her lingering in my cells wherever I go. I guess she hangs out even when I’m basically just a parasite brain in Ethan’s ex’s body.

  Listen, says the voice that’s not me and not Tasha. Listen.

  I listen. It’s not easy—I’m walking as Tasha and holding Ethan’s hand, and Viktor is making small talk about how perhaps we might prefer a small glass of sherry instead.

  “Perhaps,” my Tasha mouth says. But she keeps on thinking tea. This chick is definitely thirsty.

  We settle on tea—no big surprise. Tasha’s happy when she sips from her cup. The tea is strong and dark, and somehow I can taste it along with her. Feel its warmth going down her throat as she drinks.

  She drains the cup. I keep listening. Honestly, it’s a better option than blind panic.

  Viktor blots his lips with a white cloth napkin. Ethan continues to look confused. Is he as helpless as I am? I hope he’s figured out that he’s trapped in his former self.

  He stares at me for a while, then studies his teacup like it’s going to give him an answer. If we get out of this situation, I plan on telling him that the next time he feels that something fishy is going on, he needs to be a little more decisive. Even if he doesn’t know what the hell is going on. Don’t get sucked in by random tea drinking. No wonder it took him close to one hundred years to find me.

  “The second act is even more tragic,” Viktor says. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

  He touches me-Tasha lightly on the arm. It’s a casual motion, just sort of neutral and friendly. But on my-Tasha’s other side, Ethan stiffens slightly as Viktor’s hand makes contact. It’s a small series of events, but there’s something in it that makes Tasha tense. Her emotions flood my consciousness. She’s happy, nervous, scared, excited. The feelings rush through my brain.

  And then—well, then it’s like getting zapped by lightning. My mind dives below the small-talk and the thirstiness and Tasha’s disgust with English tea.

 
“It’s sad,” my Tasha mouth says. “But is that truly tragedy? Giselle is no longer with her lover. But she protects him in the end. She doesn’t stop loving him. It frees her from the Wilis. Although I prefer to think of them as rusalki. That German poet—Heine, I think—he took the idea from us. Still the end is the end. Love conquers all. Not so bad, perhaps.”

  And in her head I hear: Except, of course, for the loyal gamekeeper who loves Giselle and is thrown to his death by the rusalki. Or Wilis. Either way he is just as dead.

  She shifts her gaze—my gaze—to Ethan. Her heart, so steady all this time, skips a beat, then speeds up. You should never have trusted me, dearest. I am not what you think. But you will have to figure that out on your own. You are a smart man. Not like the foolish gamekeeper. But so worried about your own secrets that it never occurs to you that I might have a few of my own.

  What? Is she kidding? Oh my God. She’s not kidding. Did Tasha somehow betray Ethan in the past? Is that what I’m supposed to find out? Not about Lily, then, but Ethan?

  We—Tasha and me—take a sip of her cup of tea. Her hands are steady on the cup, but her heart is still bopping around in her chest. I feel her lips curve into a smile as she looks at Ethan.

  And when the teacup tips and tea splatters her skirt, I know she does it on purpose. In that moment when Ethan’s eyes follow the spilling tea, I see Viktor flick a finger in the air. It’s a tiny motion, barely noticeable unless you’re me and working your butt off trying to figure out how to get out of a body that’s not yours.

  The cup falls from Tasha’s hands, drops to the little table, and cracks into pieces. One tiny shard of teacup flies up and slices into the thin white skin on Tasha’s wrist. I feel the cut along with her. Quickly, she presses her other hand to her wrist, applying pressure.

  “Oh, how clumsy of me,” Tasha says. In my head, I’m hollering, Hey, she meant to spill that tea! And Viktor made the cup break! They’re both playing you! No one hears me.

  Ethan looks immediately concerned. “Let me see.” He pulls her hand away, his palms warm and soothing against her skin. I can feel her wrist pulsing. At first it looks fine, but in an instant, the sides of the cut separate. A thin line of dark red blood oozes to the surface.

  “It’s nothing,” Tasha says. Her heart is pounding now. She’s definitely nervous—and I think it’s about more than just the cut.

  Viktor gets into the act. “That needs attending.” He reaches over Ethan and presses his cloth napkin to the cut. “You’re bleeding. You wouldn’t want to develop an infection. Ethan, I do believe there is a small first-aid station on the lower floor. Shall I see if I can find some bandages?”

  I know Ethan’s response even before he gives it. And in my head I’m telling him not to fall for this. She’s hiding something. Walking away right now is the absolute worst thing he can do.

  Except that if he goes, maybe I’ll hear the truth from Viktor and Tasha once he’s gone. My invisible heart starts pumping faster.

  “Stay with her,” Ethan tells Viktor. “I’ll be right back.”

  He presses a quick kiss to Tasha’s forehead. “You won’t even know I’m gone,” Ethan says. His gaze catches Viktor’s as he stands up, and for a few beats, I feel what I’ve felt before—that he’s sensing something isn’t right. That he’s not himself.

  Does he know that he shouldn’t leave? Is he—like me—trying to get out of a body that doesn’t belong to him?

  Go, I tell him with my thoughts that I wish he could read right now. I know you’re conflicted, and I know you suspect something’s up. Which is good because you’re right. They’re up to something. But go. If you do, maybe they’ll confess something while you’re gone.

  Does Ethan somehow hear me? I don’t know. But he does what I want. He looks back at Tasha only once before he disappears down the stairs.

  Tasha and Viktor watch him go. Her emotions shift from relief to fear to something I can’t quite put my finger on. If I had my fingers right now, that is.

  “Well done,” Viktor says quietly. He smiles one of his creepy little smiles and places Tasha’s hand over the napkin pressed to her cut wrist. I sit inside Tasha’s head wishing that I could will her hand to smack him in the face.

  “The cut is deep,” she says. “Deeper than I thought. Did you do that on purpose?”

  Viktor chuckles. “Hardly. Just a little over-enthusiastic. My apologies, my dear. It will heal.”

  She huffs out a breath and I feel her forcing her pulse to settle. She’s only moderately successful. “It would heal better if I were one of you.”

  Viktor taps a finger to his lips. “Shh. That, my dear Miss Levin, is not public conversation.”

  Tasha swallows. I can taste bile in the back of her throat. “But it is what you have promised, yes? I keep an eye on Ethan and you help me bring my father to England. And if I distract Ethan long enough, you make me one of you. Immortal. I don’t ask any other questions about your motives. You don’t ask me any other questions about mine. But we made a deal, Viktor. And it seems I’ve now signed my piece in blood.”

  If I had my own jaw, it would be on the floor. She knew. She knew what they were. And Viktor promised to make her like them. Or at least that’s what she believed. Because Ethan told me he saw her years later. And she was old. Whatever Viktor promised her, it never happened.

  She smiles, and I know she’s forcing her tone to be light and sort of humorous. She’s terrified of him, but she’s trying not to let on that she’s scared.

  Viktor returns her smile, but he doesn’t answer her question. “I need him to think only of you, my dear. For the next month or so. Until I’m certain about something. You need not concern yourself about what. But I need Ethan out of the way. And you, my dear, are indeed the beautiful distraction.”

  Tasha nods. Her heart speeds up again, and I can feel her pulse in her neck. Her mind is racing—so many thoughts I can barely keep up. Lots of them are about Ethan. About bringing him home with her after the ballet. About how she’s like Giselle. She’s willing to stick it to the loyal guy to get what she wants. And if I’m not mistaken, she’s also kind of happy that Ethan’s hot so being with him is easy. At least he’s not heinous looking. He doesn’t scare the crap out of her like Viktor does.

  But what she says next, her words rushed because surely Ethan is about to come bounding up the stairs again with a bandage, is this: “How is it possible? You have promised, and I believe. Truly, I do. But for the price of this cut in my flesh, you must tell me. How? How is it that you and he never age? Will I be like that too?”

  Viktor’s eyes darken. Go ahead, I think. Tell her. I’m really curious to hear you explain that one in three and a half seconds. Are you going to tell her about Anastasia? About Baba Yaga? About the ancient magic? Go on, Great-great-grandpa Viktor, my crazy-as-a-loon ancestor. Tell her how it’s done. And if I ever get to speak to her face-to-face rather than being trapped inside her head, I’ll tell her how I stopped you. ’Cause I bet even if you knew that was coming, you’d leave it out.

  “There are ways,” he says eventually. “Old ways that I cannot, that I will not, speak of. But your own eyes tell you it is real. Your Ethan looks the same as when you first met him. He will look the same tomorrow and next month and next year and the year after that.”

  “You tell me only what I already know. Tell me what I do not.” I feel Tasha struggle to keep her voice even and firm.

  Viktor hesitates. One dark eyebrow arches. Does he find her question funny?

  “You are the one who is in my debt, Miss Levin. Not the other way around. But I do appreciate a certain amount of arrogance. Especially in a woman. So I will say this. Only one other has ever discovered what I have. His name was Koschei and—”

  “That’s a child’s story.” Tasha interrupts him. “A man who figured out how to hide his soul and live
forever. It’s a folk tale for schoolchildren and old women by the fire.”

  “Believe what you will. But I repeat. There was one. Now there are two. He had his way. I found mine. That is all I will say. Even if I told you the rest of it, you still would not believe. Ethan was like that too. But he knows differently now. Those of us who were there, we know.”

  Tasha’s voice lowers to a whisper. “Who were where? You tease me with this, Viktor.”

  I know she’s not going to break him. He’s playing with her. I scream this in my head as Ethan returns with bandages, tapes up Tasha’s wrist, and then they all walk back to their seats because the second act of Giselle has started.

  And me? I’m still trapped in Tasha’s head. It’s an angry place in there right now. She’s definitely pissed at Viktor and not really happy with Ethan either, because he’s fussing over her and I think it’s making her feel guilty. Which it should, since she’s lying through her teeth to him. Plus, she’s worried about this Koschei story—not the one Ethan has told me, something I need to remedy once I’m just plain Anne again—and she’s got this sixth-sense thing brewing that Ethan’s not quite himself.

  Onstage, the wili mermaid ladies dance around Giselle’s lover, trying to lure him to his death. I’m more than over-identifying with this ballet. Enough is wrong in my world right now without adding vengeful mermaid visuals.

  Close your eyes, I tell Tasha. Seriously. I don’t want to look at this anymore. Close your damn eyes.

  She blinks.

  Hey. Did I—

  A tiny sliver of hope rises. If I can hear her, feel her emotions, maybe—

  Close your eyes, Tasha. Go on. Do it.

  Tasha’s eyes flutter shut for a few beats, then snap open. I feel her forehead wrinkle. She looks at Viktor, then at Ethan. She touches a finger to each eyelid. Her pulse picks up the pace.

  All right. She can hear me. Sort of. I think.

  Stand up, Tasha. Stand up.

  Slowly, like she’s not sure why she’s doing it, Tasha rises from the red plush chair.