Dreaming Anastasia (3 page)

My dearest Alexei—

I am putting these words to paper to prove that beyond all reason and beyond all understanding, I am still here. I am still alive. I have pieced together what has become of me and why. And in telling each of you, my family, my dear ones, I will help myself understand—or, at least, that is my hope.

You will note, by the way, little brother, that I am writing in English, even if this sometimes makes my words clumsier than I would like. It is a tribute to our dear mama, who made sure we learned that language, and although this first entry is for you, the words honor her too, and let her live on in that way. She was at times a foolish woman, but her heart was good. And as our blood goes back on her side to the English and Queen Victoria, it seems fitting.

Blood, my Alexei, is of course no laughing matter to you. And certainly, there was more than enough of that at the end, but I'm certain I do not need to remind you of that. It is why Mama trusted Father Grigory—the one the people called Rasputin—because he promised that he would cure you. And it is, I realize now, the blessing and the curse of your birth, because, as we learned, hemophilia is passed down from mother to son. So it happened with you and Mama, even though she had prayed and hoped for a boy to join us girls and had finally gotten her wish.

But I digress. Or rather, I have yet to get to my true point. There is still more to say about blood—not yours, Alexei, and not mine—and I will try to say it here. And as we should with all good stories, I will attempt to start this one at the beginning.

The first memory I have of him was when I was about five. You were just a little, little boy then, two years old and toddling around after me. Father and I were walking in the park that afternoon, and this young man—a boy still, really, although I suppose at fourteen, most boys think they are men—with his dark hair and dark eyes came up to us.

“Hello,” he said to me, and he reached out to shake my hand.

“Hello,” I told him back, and I remember that suddenly I felt very shy, which, as you know, is not like me at all but really more like you. Remember how we always said that sometimes you just seemed to know things? Well, that was how I felt then—that this boy was important, even if I didn't understand how. I tucked myself behind Papa and clung to his legs and waited to see why this boy was here.

“Hello, sir,” the boy said to Papa, and he held out his hand to him as well.

But Papa wouldn't shake it. “You cannot be here,” Papa told him. “You simply cannot.”

“I am strong,” the boy said. “And I'm smart.”

“Even so,” Papa told him, “it does not matter.”

“She sends you her love,” the boy said then. “She knows you have another son now. And she's heard he is ill. She wishes you only the best. And the boy too.”

“And she sent you as her messenger?”

“So you could see me,” the boy said to Papa. “So you could remember that I am here also.”

“You do not exist,” Papa told him. Then he took my hand, and we walked across the park, back to the Imperial Palace.

“Who was that?” I asked our father.

“No one,” Papa said. “It was no one, Anastasia. That is all you need to know.”

But of course, that was not the truth. And although many things have passed from my memory, that day has not. “Another son,” the boy told our father. Another son. And I think if I am honest with myself, those two words were truly the beginning of the end.

But I do not want to get ahead of my tale, Alexei. And I want to write to the others as well. So I will close this for now and leave you what I have left, which is just that I remain

Your loving sister,

Anastasia

Tuesday, 10:45 am

Anne

Skin, Anne, skin.” Mrs. Kaplan, my freshman-year biology teacher, who's four-foot-eleven and so old she probably debated the theory of evolution with Darwin himself, jabs a bony, formaldehyde-smelling finger at my midsection. Actually, what she does is poke me in the belly button—which, by the way, is completely covered by my sweater—but I let it go since, let's face it, anyone who has supervised the dissection of so many frogs is probably a little loony at this point.

It's passing period between third and fourth, and I'm trying to get to chemistry. I still can't get the stupid dream out of my head, which is not like me since, as I say, I always dream weird stuff, and normally, it doesn't particularly bother me. But right now it's like I've hit a mental repeat button or something, and the images just won't leave me alone—the girl in the white dress and the old woman with the metal teeth. That jaw unhinging and trying to swallow me whole…

Maybe that's why I have no patience for Mrs. Kaplan freaking over my belly area just because there's a miniscule gap between the bottom of my new J. Crew caramel-colored sweater and the top of my honestly-not-so-very-low jeans.

Or maybe it's because I just spent thirty minutes listening to Coach Wicker attempt to explain the political complexities of Colombia and the sugarcane-ethanol industry—which, let me say, he is totally incapable of doing—followed by another ten minutes of copying the gross national products of South American countries off the overhead, the charm of which wears thin after, oh, three-and-a-half seconds. Why the administration would allow someone to teach honors world history who mispronounces Bogotá and can't find Tierra del Fuego on a map because he thinks it's in Peru is a mystery to me.

“Skin,” Mrs. Kaplan says again as I dodge out of range of her finger. “Pull that sweater down, dear.”

“Okay,” I tell her. I give the sweater a little tug, and when I realize she's still frowning at me, I tug at it again—and see, to my dismay, that the right side now hangs lower than the left.

“That's better.” Kaplan smiles. “Thanks, dear.”

I don't smile back, but at least she's no longer jabbing me in the navel, and I'm able to snake my way a little farther down the hallway.

The chemistry and physics labs sit in a row around the corner from the biology classrooms. Their positions used to be reversed until last spring when Kelly Owens tried to create her own death ray in AP physics, and the ensuing explosion caused the science folks to rethink classroom placement. Now, the labs are closer to the courtyard at the center of the building, allowing a hasty mass exit should someone try to blow up a classroom again.

“Hey, Michaelson!” The voice belongs to Adam Green, who's walked up next to me—he of the blond hair and brown eyes I used to find absurdly attractive until I realized that his conversational skills were a little less honed than his ability to unhook my bra with one hand while still holding his bottle of Corona with the other. Not that I didn't appreciate the dexterity or anything—just that he never seemed to want to do anything else, and after a while, the novelty had worn thin.

“Do you know your sweater's a little crooked?” He grins at me so I know he's just seen my one-on-one with Kaplan.

“Funny,” I tell him. “You are so hilarious.”

“Knew you missed me,” he says. He flashes me another grin.

“Not that much,” I tell him. “But thanks for the info about the sweater.”

“You coming to the game Friday?” he asks. Adam is nothing if not persistent. He also plays cornerback on the Kennedy High football team. We've had a mixed season so far, but Adam's been playing well, which I have to give him credit for, even though last week, he made sure to put the moves on Brittany Selby—the cheerleader fly girl the other ones fling into the air when they do those basket tosses—in front of me while we were all standing around right after the game.

“Maybe,” I say. “Not sure yet.”

“They're doing that tribute thing,” he says then.

“Like I said,” I tell him as my stomach does a little clenching number that I'm not particularly happy about. “I'm not sure yet. I'll let you know. But you do good out there, okay?”

I realize I do mean that last part. As for the rest of it, I'm a little less certain. Once a year, the Kennedy High Warriors do a pre-game salute to the best of the past players. We used to do it at Homecoming, but added to crowning the king and queen and the special band performance, halftime got too long. So someone decided to move it earlier in the season.

All of which would be neither here nor there except for one thing—my brother David had played football. He was the top varsity receiver his sophomore year, when both Adam and I had still been in eighth grade. Things were a little less glorious his junior year, of course, since that's when the cancer was diagnosed, and things kind of went downhill after that. But he'd been this absolutely phenomenal player—the kind who probably goes on to get college scholarships and maybe even has a chance at going pro, if he wants to.

Unless, of course, he dies before he even takes his SATs.

I'd seen the tribute invitation on the kitchen counter a few weeks ago. Neither of my parents had mentioned it beyond that. Two years might be a long time for some things. But for this, for them, it was more like two seconds.

Adam nods, and we kind of look at each other for a few moments while all this goes through my mind and some of it possibly goes through his.

“I'm gonna be late,” I say eventually, and even though it's true, it sounds sort of lame. But honestly, what else is there to say?

There's a break in the crowd, so I make a run for it. I've hooked my backpack over just one shoulder in my rush to leave Coach Wicker's class, and it's starting to slide off, so I yank it a little higher. But then something sort of catches on my already crooked sweater, and I turn my head to see what it is as I round the corner to chemistry.

So I don't notice the tall, leather-jacketed boy until I've smacked into him hard enough to cause my backpack to crash to the floor, smashing a couple of my toes in the process.

I mutter a couple of words that, were she still in earshot, Mrs. Kaplan would find just as objectionable as the length of my sweater. All I want to do is get to chemistry, and this idiot is blocking my way.

Only then I look up at his face. And realize it's him.

The guy from the ballet. The one Tess calls Mr. Stealthy.

My toes—the same ones I'm going to have to shove into pointe shoes this afternoon—are screaming, but he's standing there with that same annoyingly perfect posture. And staring at me with those sky blue eyes.

Lots of things happen here at good old Kennedy High. But having my blue-eyed—and, okay, lean and definitely packing some serious muscle under that leather jacket—stalker appear out of thin air was not something I expected.

We eyeball each other for a few seconds. And then a few more. He shoves his hand through that slightly shaggy, chestnut hair, like maybe he's a little shy or nervous or possibly just aware that he's kind of freaking me out with all the staring.

“I—uh, I saw you the other day,” I say finally. Maybe Mr. Stealthy is actually mute or overdosing on lithium or something. “At the ballet,” I finish lamely when he continues to say nothing. “You know,
Swan Lake?
I'm in pointe class this year, and we have to go to at least one ballet each semester so that we can…”

I dry up. There's no point in babbling if he's only going to stare. Even if maybe Tess was right and he
is
sort of hot. But then I remember Adam and remind myself that guys who can't carry on conversations usually try to express themselves in other ways that eventually get boring and repetitious.

“I'm Anne,” I tell him. I have no idea why I'm telling him, except that it's been an odd couple of days with the dreams and all, and maybe my defense system isn't what it used to be. “Anne Michaelson. And you are—?” I flash him a smile and hope it will finally encourage him.

Amazingly, it does.

“Ethan,” he says. “Ethan Kozninsky.” He smiles back and opens his mouth as if to start another sentence, except the warning bell bleats and cuts him off just as things are finally starting to get somewhere.

I bend down to retrieve my fallen backpack. But Ethan bends down too, and we sort of smack into each other again. And his arm brushes—hard—against mine as we both grab the backpack at the same time.

We both jolt backward. A rush of something that feels like energy courses through my arm, flashes upward until I feel it in my face like a fever. Ethan holds my gaze with those blue eyes. And then he smiles.

“Some static,” he says mildly.

“Static?” I grab the pack from him. Pain still spikes through my arm so intensely that for a few seconds, it's hard to collect my thoughts. “That was more than static. I don't know what it was, but it was way more—”

The bell rings again. A few feet in front of us, Mrs. Spears's door is still open. If I sneak in now, I can escape getting another tardy.

“Anne,” Ethan says. And then he pauses.

“I've gotta go,” I tell him. I make a dash for the room. But something makes me stop just as I've got one foot in the door. I turn around.

And realize that once again, Mr. Stealthy is gone.

Tuesday, 11:00 am

Ethan

Dude.” A girl with a ring through her eyebrow and a small stud right at the top of her lip steps out of the bathroom as I head down the hallway, now mostly empty. “Can I bum one of those? I'm all out.”

It's only then that I look down and realize I've yanked the pack of Marlboros out of my pocket.

“Uh, sure,” I tell her.

Clearly, I haven't grown any more articulate in the last thirty seconds.

Or any brighter, as she continues to stand there until it occurs to me that I need to pull a cigarette or two out of the pack and hand them over since that's what I've offered.

“Thanks, dude,” she says, and then I hustle myself out of the building before I make an even bigger mess of things than I already have.

I'm still dying for a cigarette, but as I've finally remembered that I'm supposed to be an eighteen-year-old senior standing on the sidewalk outside his public high school, that's pretty much out of the question. So is the dying, for that matter, but that's quite another story—one to add to things I'll eventually impart to Anne. Once, that is, I figure out a way to stop actually acting like the tongue-tied schoolboy I seem to be.

So I have to wait until I'm well out of sight and headed down the street to where I've parked my car before I fish the Marlboros back out of my jacket pocket, light one up, and take a few deep drags.

I realize that I could smoke the entire pack and still be what Anne would call me if she knew the word.

Zalupa
. As in, Russian for dickhead. As in, the guy who waits and searches for decades for this specific girl and then when he finds her, stands there like an idiot and just stares. As in, the guy who is me.

Ethan Kozninsky.
Zalupa.

Maybe the words froze in my throat because suddenly they were too big, too monumental, too important to say. Or maybe it was because, in truth, there is no way to prepare her for a destiny about which she knows nothing—and a task I'm fairly certain she will reject as impossible or crazy or both.

Maybe I've always been the wrong one to tell her, but it's far, far too late to do anything about that. I can only keep walking to the car that I've parked a fair distance from the school because it's the Mercedes sedan I've always favored, and I figured it would stick out in the student parking lot. Only I've clearly underestimated the conspicuous consumption of the North Shore Chicago suburbs and have realized with one glance around the lot that the Mercedes is actually a lot less flashy than I thought.

Now it's occurring to me that smashing her to the floor in between classes in order to inform her that she is the girl who alone has the power to save the Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov from the hands of the witch Baba Yaga is just possibly not the best plan I've ever had.

Like I keep saying:
zalupa.

I slip the Mercedes key out of my pocket as I cross the tree-lined street, flick the remains of the Marlboro to the pavement, and click the remote to open the door. Then I strip off my jacket, toss it in the back seat, and lean against the car while I roll up my sleeve.

My breath hitches a little as I see it.

The mark—round and red—sits on my forearm, just where it brushed against Anne. It throbs as I run my fingers over it, the pain radiating up my arm. But it is there, this physical marking that connects her to me—the sign for which we have all been waiting for so very long.

Ever since that day in 1918, when I truly was the person I still appear to be. Since the time even before that, when Brother Viktor pulled me aside in the small stone chapel and told me what was coming.

“There will be blood, Brother,” Viktor had said. “Blood and suffering and destruction. The Romanovs are on the brink of destruction.”

His words did not surprise me. The troubles in Russia had been brewing for a long while. The scandal with that crazy bastard they called Rasputin—who died of poison or bullets or drowning or maybe even the darkest of magic, depending on whom you chose to believe. The obsessions of the tsarina and the weakness of the tsar. All of them had led to this moment.

But what he had said next—well, that was a different story.

I did not have to understand, he said. I simply had to do what I was told. The Romanovs must survive. They were believers, like us. That is why the Brotherhood existed. To protect them from those who wished them destroyed.

Still, what he had proposed shocked me. I had seen many things in the years I'd spent in the Brotherhood, learned many spells. But always there had been one rule: the natural order of life could not—must not—be disrupted.

Until now.

When I was a child, my sister Masha and I had loved the old Russian folktales—tales of the gigantic witch, Baba Yaga, who would eat us if we strayed too far from home. Of the pure and innocent Vasilisa, who traveled through the forest to the witch's hut and who alone knew how to outwit the hag. But until that day, they had just been stories. Nothing more.

Only I was wrong.

And I think now as I roll down my sleeve, climb into the Mercedes, and turn the key in the ignition that perhaps there's another reason for why I behaved so ridiculously with Anne. Because how do you tell someone that a fairy tale is real? That Viktor found magic old enough and powerful enough to hold back death? That Baba Yaga, the witch from those childhood stories I loved, truly existed? Our magic had compelled her to save a Romanov. And until Anne, like Vasilisa the Brave, could find a way to reach Baba Yaga's hut, that same Romanov would remain trapped.

In truth—and it is occurring to me that this type of truth is not something I've explored for a while—I must admit that there is more to this tale—a tale that is mine and real, not something from a child's storybook.

How will I tell Anne that I should have wondered more at what Viktor told me? That I should have questioned, even as I was afraid? But I was young, and I did not know the things I do now. I had little idea about history and still less about destiny. Even now, I'm not sure that I know enough.

I only know that back then, I was willing to pledge my life. Anastasia Romanov is not the only one who is trapped.

But all that seems about to change. I've found the girl who can reverse what happened that July day so many years ago—the day the Romanovs fell in a rain of bullets and blood. The day I watched as the air stirred and darkened and Baba Yaga's enormous hands—the hands I believed were just part of a child's fairy tale—reached down and closed around the tsar's youngest daughter, Anastasia, and swept her away. The day the world believed she died.

Through my sleeve, I touch the mark on my arm once more. I think again of Anastasia, held captive for so long.
We will come for you,
I tell her, even though I know she cannot hear me.
Anne and I. We will be there soon.

But only if I can stop being such a
zalupa.