Memories of the Grand Duchess
"Thought I'd been through this in 1919
Counting the tears Of ten thousand men
And gathered them all But my feet are slipping
There's something we left on the windowsill
There's something we left yes"
-"Yes, Anastasia" by Tori Amos
I
Shoes
"I'll count to ten," he said, thick eyebrows furrowed in a concerned expression as Anastasia Nikolaevna shifted from foot to foot, keeping weight on the left more so than the right.
"Better make it twenty," she said, and she grinned at him through a few loose strands of her strawberry-blond hair. "You can count that high, can't you, Gleb?"
"You're hilarious, Nastya," he said, wrinkling his nose. "I can count much higher and you know it."
"Count, then," she said, making shooing motions with her hands. He let out an exaggerated sigh as he turned to lean into the wall, and she stepped back. After a moment to make sure he wasn't peeking, she sprinted from the room.
"One," Gleb intoned loudly, "two, three…"
She ran through two rooms before slowing her paces and creeping into the next one…where…where…there! She crossed to a heavy curtain and looked it over seriously. It was a good hiding place, a very good one, very her…but he would be expecting her to go there, and the curtain hung too high off the ground, her shoes would be visible. Gleb had always been too clever by half.
"Eleven," she heard his voice say, and that's when it hit her.
Lifting her right foot to hand level, carefully balancing on her left, she removed her little buckled shoe, then did the same with the other, and tucked them both beneath the curtain before swiftly and silently padding into the next chamber and looking around the doorway to watch.
"What are you doing, little imp?" a voice said from behind her. Anastasia whipped around and held up a finger to her lips to hush her oldest sister, who had come around the corner just in time to see Anastasia hide.
"Gleb and I are playing hide and seek," she whispered, and pointed at her shoes. Olga turned to look and chuckled, nodding to Anastasia before moving along. She gave her an approving gesture with her hand and Anastasia turned her blue eyes back to the scene.
He wandered into the room, green eyes searching until they fell on the shoes. This was it, she thought, trying to keep herself from laughing. He was going to fall right for it, alright.
His hand reached for the curtain, fingers outstretched…then suddenly pulled back, and he looked over his shoulder and grinned, approaching her. His eyes met hers and her smile faded from her face.
"You almost had me," he said, "but you giggled."
She pinched him.
II
Christmas
Alexei laughed. The sound, as it always did, made her heart skitter. She loved her little brother so much that it physically hurt her sometimes, felt as though the joy that filled her was a tangible thing and that it welled up in her so completely she was going to burst.
They were making gingerbread men, and she had put icing undergarments on one's head. Anything to make him laugh, anything to see him smile.
III
Lessons
"Focus, Nastya," he said, and his voice was calm and resonant in the large, nigh empty chamber. Father Grigori was a large man with an untamed mane of hair and a bushy beard, but as unkempt as he looked, she knew how wise he was. As wild and mad as he looked, he was always kind to her. "You will need to know this when your brother needs you and I am not there to help him."
Across her palm was a shallow cut, though you wouldn't know it from how badly it bled. Anastasia and her sisters bled more than other people, their mother would say, because they carried the royal disease dormant in their genes. Hemophilia, a blood sickness that had hit only Alexei with the brunt of itself, and Father Grigori knew how to curb it.
She felt down her arm and to the stinging place on her palm, imagined knitting the flesh together. She felt it tug, felt it swell and almost as though the skin itself was stitching together, she felt it begin to close. The smell of hyacinth hung in the air, overpowering the sharp iron of the wound.
"Stop now," he said. It was not completely finished, but the floral smell had wilted, and whenever it did that, Anastasia knew it was time to put her practice to rest. She was rarely tired, but lessons with Father Grigori always left her weary in a deep sort of way that had nothing to do with her body and everything to do with her soul.
"Good, he said, wiping the blood away with a handkerchief, "very good. You're coming along brilliantly, Nastya."
She beamed at him. He took her hand in his and passed his palm over it, whispering in low tones. When his flesh had passed over hers completely, there was no sign that there had ever been a wound to begin with.
IV
Dream
She could have sworn she'd woken, but the next day she was just as sure that she had not done so. All she knew for certain was that in her dreamlike state, her dear friend, her Grigori Rasputin, had been standing in the very same room she was in.
"Go to him," he said, "tomorrow in the afternoon. To Alexei."
As certain as she was that she had dreamed the thing, she did as he asked her. Even in her dreams, Father Grigori was seldom wrong, and she respected him more than almost anyone she knew.
It was so strange…one moment he was fine and the next he had cut himself on the iron of the window sill. She focused and held out her hand. A soft pink glow wrapped his fore-arm and the smell of hyacinths filled the room.
Alexei widened his eyes at her, but Anastasia shook her head. "We mustn't talk about this, little brother. Now…shall we make some gingerbread men?"
V
News
She couldn't believe what she was hearing. The words had sunk in, but she couldn't bring herself to feel anything for it, because she couldn't believe it to be true. Her sisters huddled together, and though she felt their warmth she could scarcely think to move at all. Everything from here on changed. The thing that had been around them, protecting them, saving them from the terrible things outside, had been removed. Taken from them.
Father Grigori was dead.
VI
Pigs
He had sent her another drawing of pigs in clothes. Anastasia smiled at Gleb's rendition of court. His satirical work had always made her laugh, even if it wasn't as high energy as she preferred in herself. They were sixteen now, both of them, and he was no longer permitted to come see her, but his father would still smuggle his drawings.
She leaned down and took up a piece of fresh parchment and began to write a story to go along with the illustration. When he finished looking at her father she would have him smuggle it back to her old friend.
VII
Basement
"Wake up."
The voice was gruff and loud. She and her sisters sat up, and through the haze of her sleep, she fathomed the barking words.
"Dress yourselves, we're leaving. We have to move you. The White Army is on our doorstep and there will be blood, we can't have you hurt in the struggle."
So they dressed, all of them. She donned one corset, then the other, the one lined with the family's jewels. She, her mother, her sisters and Alexei all had them. They had to smuggle their valuables one way or another, and it seemed the best and most subtle way to do it. It was heavy, though.
She followed the men down the stairs. One of them prodded her with the butt of his rifle as they were ushered into a small basement room.
"It's so late," her mother said, and she sat in one of two chairs that had been left down here. Alexei took the other, leaning his head on her shoulder. He was fourteen, now. They sat in silence for a long time…before Yurovsky came in, followed by a troup of men with guns.
"Nicholas," he said, straightening. His face was curiously blank under his thick beard. "It has been lovely, but I am afraid you and your family are to be executed now."
His brow furrowed, an expression of pure confusion on his features.
"What?" He began to turn to his family, but the rattle of gunfire cut him off, cut all of them off. Someone screamed. It may have been Anastasia. She would think of this moment later, over and over again, and still not be able to tell.
One moment, her father was turning to speak to mother, and the next he was dead on the ground. Mother lay not too far from him, eyes wide and blank, never to blink or show any expression again. Maria held her arm. The room was beginning to fill with dust and smoke.
A door opened and they left to let the smoke clear. She shifted back into a corner. It didn't seem like nearly long enough before they returned, targeting her dear Alexei first. They shot him repeatedly in the torso, but he did not bleed…the jewels, Anastasia remembered, they were protecting him! No sooner did she feel that flicker of hope than one of the guards buried two bullets in his head. Another followed suit and the two oldest sisters fell.
She felt Maria's arms around her for a moment before one of the guards pulled her back by the hair and stabbed at her torso. The jewels…the jewels were protecting them, but jewels in one's corset would never help a bullet to the brain, and Maria…oh god, Maria…Alexei…
Then he went for her. The knife hit home, chinking off of the gems in her midrift, and then, she stopped struggling. He went for his gun. The smell of liquor on his breath was strong, perhaps if she…the gun went off. She went limp. There was pain. The dead do not feel pain.
She cracked her eyes to make sure smoke was still in the room after she hit the ground, and the smell of hyacinths pervaded the air around her. The gun smoke blocked out the scent of her aura. Her head wound closed almost immediately, but the blood was still there.
On the way out, she heard one of her sister's scream…there was another gun shot…if only she had had the sense to stay quiet, she thought, her heart wrenching. She lay still, breathing too shallow, and waited for all the footsteps to fade.
That was when she stood.
That was when she staggered.
That was when she walked away, riddled with wounds from the bullets and with a knocking pain in her head. The walk could kill her, she thought, but if she stayed, the Bolsheviks definitely would.
VIII
Able to Live Again
She staggered out into the streets and wandered for a long, long time. She had not an inkling where she was going, or how long it really took before the figure found her. The last person she expected to help her now was a dead man…and for a moment, she wondered if she was in heaven.
She dismissed it. In heaven, there would be no pain.
"Nastya," Father Grigori murmured.
"They didn't expect me to get back up again," she said, taking a shaky step forward.
"I know, child," he said.
"They were wrong," she said.
"I know, child," he replied.
She offered a weak smile before her feet caved out from under her. The last thing she remembered was being lifted by a pair of strong arms and carried away.
IX
Immortal
When she came to, she immediately knew the man standing over her was no human.
She was lying on a stone slab beneath the outstretched hand of a bearded man. He held in his hand a rod with a metallic blue snake coiled around it, that moved as the man's aura moved. Her heart was beating. She did not hurt at all. Now, she truly wondered if she had died.
"Nastya," Grigori's voice said, "this is Asclepius. He was the one that granted me immortality, and he will do the same for you, if you choose to accept it, choose to serve him."
She sat up and her eyes fell on her feet. She had lived her whole life with her toes grown inward at a sharp, and strange angle, but now, they were perfectly straight. He had done more than just heal her wounds, more than just allowed her to live.
Surely serving someone like this, a healer, would not be so terrible.
X
The Illusionist
She reached out and made the space before her shiver as though it had come to a great amount of heat, and after a moment, what almost seemed to be a mirage appeared. The image was of a baby elephant, one with a collar around its neck. It had been Alexei's, once upon a time.
"That is a very detailed image," Father Grigori said from behind her, approvingly. He walked a little closer and she heard him smell the air. "And a different smell…Gingerbread?"
"It reminds me of Christmas," she explained, and offered no more to hm. No more was needed. Just like the elephant…gingerbread had been Alexei's too.