Anastasia Forever (5 page)

Tess puts her hand on my shoulder. “Anne, please. I'm sorry I brought up the Ben thing. I thought you'd want to—I'm sorry.”

I realize that if I look at her, I'm going to cry. I'm relieved when I hear the sound of a car pulling into our driveway. My dad's home, probably with the Chinese takeout. Enough of my personal pity party. We'll go downstairs and eat egg rolls and fried rice and whatever else he's brought. There's time still before this all comes apart. This morning I stopped Baba Yaga from sending me wherever it is she expects me to go. After all, part of this power inside me is hers. It makes sense that I could fight back.

This is my big, bold plan—to eat pork with garlic sauce—when the world starts to bend and fold right here inside my room. Tess screams. The fur on Buster's back stands on end. He hisses.

“You are hesitating too long, girl,” Baba Yaga hollers, hovering in her mortar at my window, impossibly large and impossibly half in and half out of my room, the wall somehow bending with everything else to accommodate her. A red scarf—her babushka—covers her head. Her skin is brown and wrinkled, and her eyes glow like two huge black orbs, a skull where each pupil should be.

Her mouth twists in a grimace as she bares her iron teeth. “You have all this inside you now, tucked away, and what do you do? Nothing. Are you still the girl who bargained with me in my forest? That girl was strong. That girl did not let go of what she wanted. But you? You sit and wait. You play with your magic. Tomatoes on a vine. Candle flames. Such a child you are. Such a silly little girl. You know you feel it stirring inside you. You called me to you with it, girl. Even if you do not understand how.”

Buster launches himself at my witch. He swipes at one of her huge hands with his paw. Unfortunately, Buster is declawed. So he doesn't really do much damage before the hand swats him across the room. He hits my carpet with a smacking sound and lies there looking dazed and angry.

“You've got your own cat,” I scream at her. “Leave mine alone.”

“Yeah,” Tess adds in a pause between my screams. “This isn't your forest. You need to go away.”

“The barriers are broken, girl. Did you not understand what you have promised? What you are? What you will become? But first, you have a job to do. And you must begin it now.”

There's a sound like rushing water, and Tess grabs my hand. The world contracts again. I think I'm screaming, but I'm not even sure of that. And then, Baba Yaga still looming in my window and the world swirling like a kaleidoscope, I hear the sound of Ethan's voice in my head.

“No,” he seems to be saying. “No. Anne. Wait. I'm coming. I need to be with you. You can't—”

If he's really saying something and not just a figment of my terrified imagination, he doesn't get the chance to finish. Because the world contracts even smaller, and then we're gone, Tess and I, tumbling through blank empty space and rushing noise.

I feel her pull away from me. From everything. I'd thought the link between us severed as I passed my magic to her in the lake. But I was wrong. Somehow, it's grown stronger. Strong enough that I can feel her fear. See her clearly for a brief second or two. In her room with Tess and the witch, the Alexander Palace on the computer screen behind her. In my mind, I call to her. Ridiculously, I tell her to wait. To hold on. Only what can I do? She's there, and I'm here, just steps outside the café, with Dimitri.

“What is it?” he asks. He stares at me like I've gone mad. “What do you see?” He looks around us as though something will be there.

“It's begun,” I tell him. “I'm not ready to help her.” And in my head:
will I ever be ready?

“Then I would think you should do something about that, Brother,” he tells me. “Or perhaps you already have. I am no fool, Ethan. You are not completely without power now, eh? There is something left?”

I hesitate, but then I admit it. “Something new. Like what we had, but not exactly. I don't understand it yet. But it's there.”

He watches me, eyes dark, then darker. “I do not like liars, Brother. If you want my help, then do not withhold the truth from me again.”

I let him have the last word. I have no plans to apologize. No further promises. Our pact is what it is. Either we hold to it, or we don't. I have no patience to argue with him.

“Explain,” he says eventually.

“Forward and backward. The past, the present, the future. The witch has sent her somewhere. Russia, I think. But I don't know how to reach her. I thought I could help her control how she went into this. She—we—stopped it this morning. I thought…”

Panic rises. How could I have let her out of my sight today after what happened earlier? After all we have been through, one thing has never changed. I am still quite the
zalupa
. Or perhaps our Russian word for
dickhead
gives me too much credit. Baba Yaga was tricked by us once. I doubt she will be so foolish ever again.

“You're telling me that Anne is somewhere in Russia at some time possibly past, present, or future, and you have no idea how to get her back?”

I nod.

“And she's alone?”

I sigh. “No,” I tell Dimitri. “She's with Tess.”

“I think I'm going to puke.” Tess leans over and does just that. Wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “Gross.”

The world has stopped gyrating. But my room is gone. We're half sitting, half lying in the middle of a dusty road. I have dirt in my mouth. When I spit, the blob of saliva looks dusty too.

Done puking, Tess shoves her hair out of her eyes and looks around. So do I.

Here's what we see: Little wooden houses in the distance. A horse-drawn wagon bouncing up the crappy dirt road just beyond where we've landed. Trees. Possibly a small farm, if I squint.

We are in big trouble.

Tess catches on quickly. “We're not in Baba Yaga's forest, are we?” she asks in a voice that mirrors the panic growing inside me. “Oh, my God, Anne. What the hell just happened? And explain to me why I continue being your friend.”

My heart is pounding so rapidly that I figure I won't have to come up with an answer. I'll just die right here of some kind of coronary incident, and Tess will have to figure it out on her own. Which possibly would be the better scenario.

“Russia.” I stand, brush dirt off my clothes. “It's Russia. I mean, we're in Russia. I think. Or maybe it's called the Soviet Union. Or one of the places that ends in 'stan. You're the history person. The Ukraine, maybe. Belarus? Do you see a primeval forest? It could be Poland. Shit. I guess it depends on what year it is.”

“Year? Did you say
year
?” Tess's voice hits a range somewhere between screech and glass breakage. Over on the dirt road, the horse and wagon plod slowly by. Luckily the guy in the peasant outfit is too busy shooing away a cow to pay attention to us. Or maybe he does see us and figures we're just a figment of his imagination. Maybe Tess's screaming has rendered him spontaneously deaf. Anything is possible at this point.

“I'm pretty sure,” I say. I try to sound calm. And like I know what I'm talking about. I
think
we're in Russia. But I've only seen it in books and on the Internet. For all I know we could be in northern Wisconsin. Maybe people still ride in wagons as you get closer to Canada.

“Well,” I continue, trying to stumble my way to something that sounds plausible. “None of this looks anything close to where Ethan and I were for those few seconds this morning. But it does look like Russia. At least I think it does. Plus, what Baba Yaga told me, remember? The past, the present, the future all mingling? So I guess this is the past? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the Alexander Palace is behind that clump of trees?” My explanation comes out like a question. Not good.

“There is no palace here, Anne. Do you see a palace? There's grass and trees and dirt and that guy and his wagon. And oh yeah, I threw up a little on my new white shirt. Fabulous. You and Blue Eyes go to the palace. You and
I
are stuck in the middle of Russian nowhere. And I
so
hope you have a plan for how to get us out of here.”

I think this over while Tess brushes some more nineteenth-century or possibly twentieth-century—since didn't they still ride around in wagons in the early nineteen hundreds, especially in rural wherever we are?—dirt off her jeans. They're her favorite pair, a sort of skinny but not too skinny dark gray that make her butt look phenomenal. Now they're here with her, and neither of them is looking happy about it. If jeans could talk, hers would say, “Get me back to the mall.”

“I don't know why we're not at the Alexander Palace,” I say as Tess finally gives up on the dirt brushing. “It doesn't make any sense.”

“Oh, but the time-travel part—that's just fine?”

“You're not helping, you know. What I mean is if Baba Yaga sent us here, then why? If she's decided to get this journey thing going, why show me one place a few hours ago but then have us end up somewhere else?”

“Because she's, oh, I don't know, a crazy witch?”

“That's not an answer.”

“It's good enough for me. And speaking of crazy witches, Glinda, you're the one who's all powered up these days. Can't you, like, just zap us back home? I mean isn't that the point? She gave you extra mojo and now you owe her?”

Tess has a way of boiling the complex down to the basics. Except it still doesn't answer my question: why here? What is it about here, wherever here is?

I blow out a breath and try to calm down again. “Think, Tess. We need to think.”

“We need to get out of here.”

“And that's not going to happen if you keep bitching.”

“Well, I wouldn't have to if you'd only—”

“Ethan.” Maybe it's my annoyance at Tess's refusal to shut up that makes the fog of paralyzing fear lift just the tiniest bit. I'd heard him, hadn't I? Just as everything began to go all wonky, and we swirled around and ended up here.

“Ethan what?” Tess looks to her left and then her right. “Is he here too? Because that would be—”

I place my hand over her mouth. “Just shut up for two seconds. Please.” I close my eyes. Tess stays silent. And then I remember.

“I heard him! Just as we were starting to get sucked away. His voice was in my head or something. He was telling me to hold on. He said he needed to be here with me. Only then the connection or whatever it was just broke.”

“Well, that explains
everything
, Anne.”

We stand there glaring at each other. Tess digs her cell phone out of her pocket and looks at the screen hopefully. She presses every button. Her forehead wrinkles.

“No service, no bars.”

“No kidding. I—do you feel that?” The ground has begun to vibrate beneath us. I feel it in my feet, then my legs, then inside me like the too-loud bass of a passing car. We look toward the road as they appear. Horses and riders. At least a dozen.

They careen around the bend of the dirt road where that wagon had been, riding fast, then faster. The riders are men, all of them. All with big fur hats and wearing pants and a tunic top that looks military. And every single one of them is holding a sword. Make that a terrifyingly huge, curved sword.

Cossacks.
I know it as I see them. Know it because they're part of the story that Ethan had told me when I first met him. That day we ran to his loft and he told me the story of how he ended up in the Brotherhood.
Cossacks.
The men who killed his family.

My heart begins to pump wildly in my chest. Actually, wildly doesn't even begin to cover it. Some vague, tiny piece of me says, “Hey, Anne, don't you have some sort of magic witchy powers that can stop the crazy Cossacks with their Huge, Pointy, Scary Swords?”

Except I'm not a witch. I'm just Anne who doesn't know what the hell she's doing and is probably going to die here before she figures it out. I resort to the only answer that makes sense right now.

“Run,” I tell Tess. “Run. Now.”

There's a grove of trees in the distance—not quite a forest, but maybe good enough. It's far, but maybe we can make it. We run as fast as we can, but the ground is rocky and uneven, and clouds of dust fly as our shoes slap the dirt. My whole body vibrates with the sound of the horses coming up behind us.

“Oh my God.” Tess glances behind her. “We're not going to make it.”

She stumbles. I try to grab her, but it's too late. She slams into the ground, right knee first, and skids. Her face smacks the dirt. When she rolls over and tries to sit up, I can see that her hand is cut and bleeding, and there's a long gash over her left eyebrow. Blood streams down her face and into her eyes.

“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!”