Anastasia Forever (17 page)

My stomach pitches as Baba Yaga's detached hand hoists us through darkening clouds to the mortar, then above it.

“Don't drop me!” Tess screeches.

“Hang on! Holy crap, Tess. You're slipping. Hold my damn hand.”

We're right above the middle of the mortar, but the hand drags us higher. Baba Yaga tips her red scarf-covered head back and smiles, her iron teeth glinting in the lightning.

We fall. Not descend, just plummet. The hand is still holding me and I'm still gripping Tess—still screaming—but we fall fast. We slam facedown into the mortar—Tess first, then me. I smack down so hard that my breath seizes in my chest and I see tiny black dots.

I groan and roll over and suck in painful, rasping breaths as my lungs refill with air. Baba Yaga drapes her arm with the flapping sleeve over the side of the mortar, and the hand shoots back up and reattaches.

The storm disappears, but not the clouds.

Tess. She's saying something, but my ears are still ringing and my head throbs with each jackrabbit beat of my heart. We link fingers and stand. I touch my pulsing forehead. My fingers graze a bump the size of a small egg from where my head hit the mortar.

Baba Yaga swivels to face us. Her mouth is huge, her chin solid and muscular, the bones jutting against her ancient skin in the spots where I've seen her jaw drop and unhinge. Both hands now back in her sleeves, she reaches for us and smooths a sandpapery palm across each of our foreheads. In unison, we recoil, but there's no place to go. The mortar is sticky under my feet. I try not to think about what it's sticky with.

“What say you, Daughter Anne?” Baba Yaga glowers at me with her black eyes. Tess squeezes my hand—hard.

“I'm not your daughter, Yaga. Never was. Never will be. But I am asking for your help again. And willing to return to your forest.”

Baba Yaga smiles, and the wrinkles etched into her leathery brown skin deepen into canyons. I watch my reflection in her iron teeth—my hair all tangled, my eyes huge and darker than they're supposed to be, my mouth fixed in a straight line. I look old—well, older.

The air around us shimmers. I blink. We're in the forest as though we've always been there. The hut breathes in and out in front of us. The chicken legs claw at the ground. The skulls on the fence glow, lighting up their empty eye sockets. I hear a hissing and then a meow and Baba Yaga's
koshka
, which I know now is Russian for
cat
, slithers out of a shadowy corner and flicks its pink tongue at us.

“I don't want to be here,” Tess says under her breath. It is a little late for her to come to this particular conclusion.

Baba Yaga smiles again. “I can arrange for you to be gone.”

We move the party inside the hut, the huge wooden door closing behind us with a thud that makes my pulse jump.

The room is as it was the last time I saw it, as it always is in my dreams: wooden floor, narrow bed, table, chairs, and a deep fireplace in the corner. Floating in the center of the fire, a bleached white skull grins at us. Flames lick the centers of what used to be eyes.

I shiver, gooseflesh prickling my skin. Tess rubs her hands over her arms. The room feels icy even though a fire roars in the fireplace only a few steps away.

Baba Yaga flicks one enormous, leather-skinned wrist. The sleeve of her brown dress ripples as her hand detaches and scuttles across the wooden floor. Tess blinks. Suddenly, I can't breathe, can't swallow. The hand is wrapped around my throat, the fingers squeezing like giant snakes.

“If I killed you right here—just because I can—would it still be worth it for you to have come? Imagine, girl. You dead. Your Tess keeping me company. Is this what you want? Think, Anne. So much that you should be doing. So much that you have promised me. You are not the girl you were. You will not be her again. Desire does not make things so. Look at me and know this.”

I don't want to look at her. I absolutely do not. The hand turns my head, and then the pressure is so great that I can't even close my eyes. My vision starts to go spotty again—more little black dots flickering everywhere. I tell myself not to pass out. I need to keep Tess safe. I need to—

She squeezes my neck tighter. I remember that horrible moment on the El train last fall when Viktor tried to kill me. It felt like this, didn't it? Somewhere I think I hear Tess screaming.

“You have questions, girl. I know this. What did I see? What did I know? Perhaps you think me the fool. Your Viktor managed to get the best of me, you think. Here I am, his captor, the mighty Baba Yaga, and yet he escapes. With your help, of course, but not the same as when he entered my forest. Perhaps I will answer you, daughter. Perhaps I will eat your friend. Grind her bones between my teeth while you watch.

“Time will tell, as it always does in my hut. But first this: you know only what I am now and what I was before. Let me show you the in between, girl. The thing I am. The thing the Victor and his Brotherhood and even your silly Ethan diluted when they compelled me to protect Anastasia. Look. Listen. Learn. You will see me. You will be me.”

I try to look away, but it's hopeless. I sink into her gaze, deeper and deeper. Then it's like when I used to dream I was Anastasia. The piece that's me and the piece that's the witch soften and meld until I can't tell what's me and what's her. The story that unfolds is familiar. Then it creeps into places she has not let me see. Like my journeys to the past, I think before my thoughts are only hers. Returning again and again as long-hidden secrets rise. The dark parts that lie in all of us. The ones we never share.

I
sit
in
this
same
hut, staring into my fire. It warms me, but not enough. Never, ever enough. I used to love the sun on my face, I think. I used to run in the woods and pick bright yellow and pink flowers to make wreaths and necklaces. But one day it wasn't enough. Maybe it never was. This is what I think now as I rock in my chair and my koshka winds himself around my ankles. As the fire crackles and burns, and the skull that was once the head of an enemy hovers in the flames.

Beauty
betrayed
me. Or perhaps I betrayed myself. In my mind, I see the man that I loved, the one I gave myself to, completely and joyfully. He is tall and his brown hair is thick when I stroke it. His cheekbones are sharp and his face thin, his green eyes thoughtful. He has long fingers that set sparks in my skin when he touches me. I remember the feel of his lips as they press against my cheek, my neck, my mouth. Did I love him? I no longer know what this word means. What does it mean to love someone—to be loved in return?

I
only
know
the
anger
that
burned
in
me
when
I
saw
his
hands
stroking
another
woman's face. Had he ever really seen me? Loved me? His child was just barely planted in me at that moment. Not even a full month, but I knew. I pressed my hands against my still flat belly. When I told him, he shrugged. “That is your business, Yaga,” he said.

This
is
how
things
were
then, in the old days. The child was my concern, not his.

I
wept
for
a
very
long
time. But nothing changed. Tears do not have power. Only actions do. I had always known I was different. Even then, when we lived close to nature, I was closer. The elements had always felt a part of me—my herbs grew more lushly, deer ate from my outstretched hand. My journey to the Old Ones did not take me long.

“Be certain,” they told me. “We do not give this gift often. Its price is steep.”

Inside
me, I felt his child flutter. I was certain. I would give up my beauty for the power they offered. I would do it with a willing heart. I would teach this child my ways, not his.

The
pain
was
enormous. It ripped through me, over me, inside me. All change comes with pain, but I had never known something like this. In the end I lay alone in the forest. I crawled to the stream and stared at my reflection. A monster stared back. Eyes black as pitch. Nose long and hooked under as though it wanted to meet my lips. I pulled them back into a smile. My teeth glinted in the water. I reached up to run my finger over them. They were iron, now, dark gray. Inhuman. My skin, once the smooth color of almonds, was now dark and wrinkled. Age spots, huge as saucers, covered my body.

I
looked
down
at
my
hands. They were huge, each knotted knuckle the size of a walnut. When the first hand slipped from my wrist and dropped into the stream, then flicked its fingers and scuttled back onto the ground at my feet, I felt myself sway on the verge of unconsciousness.

The
hunger
came
next—huge as the new body that housed the woman who used to be me. I stumbled to my feet. My new hand marched on fingertips up my leg and angled itself back to my wrist. The reattachment burned, but I was too ravenous to feel it.

I
came
to
the
apple
tree
first, studded in small blooms that would not be fruit for weeks. I slammed into it, wrapped my arms around the trunk. Apples. Apples. Full, lush, red. I ripped them off the branches, bit into their flesh, the juice running down my face, sweet and sticky. I ate until the tree was empty. And still I craved more.

It
was
then
that
I
remembered
the
child
inside
me. The image of the tiny baby mixed in my mind with the red, red of the apples. Perhaps if it was a girl, I would call her Rose. The apples were a sign. Her tiny cheeks would be red and plump. I pressed my hands to my stomach, those ugly, hideous monster hands that were now mine, the ones which had just climbed the apple tree to pluck the highest branches for the fruit I'd devoured, seeds and core and all.

Was
it
my
new
self
that
told
me? Or would I have known even as I used to be? The child was gone. Not miscarried, not born. Not ripped away. Just simply absent. It was then that I began to understand the price of what I had asked. To be more than human was to be less than human. I had stepped into a different forest. There would be no going back. I do not know how long I wept.

The
hunger
returned, sharper than before. I stumbled through the forest, wound my way in the direction of my home. But I could not cross the stream. I could wade almost to the opposite shore, close enough that I could almost touch it. But not quite. I stood in the water, the bottom of my dress soaked and heavy. The sun beat down on my head. Somehow the heat made the hunger worse.

In
my
pocket
was
an
old
red
scarf. I wrapped it around my head, tied it under my chin with clumsy fingers, pulled it forward to hide my face in its shadows. It was then that I saw him—a boy of about six or seven, walking along the opposite shore.

“Babushka!” he called to me, and I knew how I looked to him—a grandmother, an old woman. The hunger grew even more.

“Babushka,” he said again. “Are you stuck? Do you need help?”

I
nodded, keeping my face half hidden in my red scarf. My empty belly growled. He waded to me. Held out his firmly fleshed little hand. My own hands were stuffed into the pockets of my dress. I waited until he came closer, too close to escape. I remember that he smelled sweet and young and juicy as the apples.

I
devoured
him
whole. My mouth opened, my jaw dropped impossibly wide. I reached for him with those hideous hands and stuffed him inside me. He had offered help but I had not wanted any. He had been kind. I ate him anyway. His bones crunched between my teeth. My heart beat wildly with each bite. The part of me that remembered what it was to be human tried to resist. The power I had welcomed did not hesitate.

Afterward
I
cried
again. It was the last time I would ever weep. Back in the forest, I built my hut. Manipulated wood and stones to form a structure. Once I had raised chickens for meat and eggs. Now I placed my hut atop two enormous enchanted chicken legs. Function and amusement. My home would move from place to place. I would outwit my enemies, especially those who would see this strange hut and think it less for its appearance. I would know better. I would know all.

The
heads
of
my
enemies
began
to
line
my
fence. Each skull placed neatly on a pike as though I was planting sunflowers. The legends had begun by them, most of them true. The Russians called me Baba Yaga. Auntie Yaga. The name was a dark humor. I was not benevolent Auntie, stirring soup and boiling potatoes. I was Baba Yaga—the most powerful witch that ever lived. The Death Crone. The Bone Mother.

This
is
what
I
remember
as
I
sit
before
my
fire. This is what I know as I rock in my chair. This is—