Chapter 7: Journey to the Past
She was standing in a darkened space. The precise contours of that space were amorphous and unclear, such that she didn't know where she was exactly - a room. A field. Somewhere... Though upon looking down and seeing her reflection hazily visible in some kind of surface, she surmised she might be in a large interior space. Maybe a ballroom.
"Who are you?" She glanced up, eyes darting about, a twinge of fear in her breast that made her breath come out in rough gasps. "Who are you?!"
She opened her mouth to answer the stranger - a deep baritone voice that was vaguely familiar.
The stranger - unseen in this darkened maybe-ballroom - lost patience. "WHO ARE YOU?!" he bellowed in frustration, the sound just a tick below a scream.
Her voice came out in a defiant yell as she answered back, loud enough for the heavens to hear:
"I AM MONICHIVNA - COURTENEYANA - GELLEROFF!"
The dream - or was it a nightmare? - ended abruptly as she felt someone vigorously shaking her.
"Gelleroff... Gelleroff..." Mona attempted to bat away the intruder even as she just started to surface up out of her subconscious.
"Psst! Hey! Hey, Mona! Time to wake up, kid."
Mona stirred and snapped awake the last little bit with a start. Gaze ping-ponging about in panic, it finally settled on Chandler's face, which was trying and failing to betray his deep concern and the questions he clearly wanted to ask her.
Relief and an overwhelming sense of peace flooding her, Mona threw her arms around his neck, unable to stifle the small sob that now caught in her throat.
"It's all right..." Chandler's rumbling tenor was a soothing balm on her soul. "You're safe now... It was just a nightmare..."
Nodding against the firm ridge of his shoulder, Mona drew back, brushing her hair out of her eyes along with the moisture and smiled wetly, weakly. She glanced about them.
They had made camp in yet another snowbank after successfully leaping from the train some days ago. Chandler kept them to the treeline of this dense forest, following the trestle tracks but at a safe distance. It was the only reference point they had in this frigid wasteland. And at least they knew the railroad ties would eventually lead them into Paris. Whenever the whistle of a cargo freight or especially a passenger train was heard approaching, Chandler would hustle her and Ross deeper into the underbrush to wait until it passed.
"Ross is just breaking camp. We'll be moving out soon." Chandler bit his lip with excitement. "With any luck, there's a chance we could make the outskirts of Paris before dark."
Mona brightened considerably at this. They had had no choice but to disembark the train early, but in spite of having been long accustomed to going without in her life, she was cold and she was tired. Even street urchins like herself and Chandler were not built for roughing it out in the wilderness. Ross? Even less so. Luckily for him, perhaps, there wasn't much camp to break - just gathering the pair of valises he and Chandler had carried onboard in Petersburg and stamping the fire out.
Seeing Chandler's outstretched palm, Mona took it with another weak smile of thanks and he helped her to her feet. It was a moment before he dropped her hand, flushing, though this might have been due to the chill.
"Come on, you two! I don't want to sleep in the snow again, so let's try to make a farm by sundown!" Ross hollered, stumbling doggedly through the drifts over towards the ridge of the next bank. Loaded down as he was, the sight was quite comical.
Chandler smirked. "We'd better follow him. He's right: a barn would be a much preferable place to spend the night, if we can only make the city outskirts."
Mona ducked her head shyly as she fell into companionable step beside him. For days, she had been waiting for him to broach the subject of the good luck kiss they had shared - well, really, she had planted on him - before taking that leap of faith into open air. Until that moment their lips had touched, she had never kissed a man in her entire life. Oh, plenty of drunken men along the streets of Petersburg had tried to plant one on her, but she'd never let them have a crack. A Russian gutter rat who wasn't assertive in her bodily autonomy was a Russian gutter rat who got molested, or worse, raped.
But Chandler hadn't brought up the kiss they had shared, so neither had she. Perhaps his silence indicated that he hadn't been pleased with it. After all, she had initiated it, practically forced it on him. She should apologize. Yes, that's what she should do! Wait: even if she did apologize for kissing him without permission, he would just slough it off and say it was all right. That was Chandler's way.
Mona wanted to broach the subject of the kiss. But when she opened her mouth, what she asked instead was:
"What do you want to do once we get to Paris?"
Chandler stopped in his tracks for a moment, turning to look at her in bemusement. "What?"
She swallowed. "Back on the train, we were all talking about what we'd do if we got to Paris. Ross and I shared; you didn't. What do you want to do once we get there?"
Chandler looked askance, clearly uncomfortable with the question. He tried to brush it off. "Oh, well... I, um..." He cleared his throat, awkwardly. "Mostly just see the sights." At her doleful blinking, he sent her a tousled grin that wasn't as cocksure as the one she'd come to know. "Don't get me wrong: there were plenty of sights in Petersburg - before the Bolsheviks overran it." He shrugged. "Make a home. I mean: it's not like I have a home to go back to..." He gestured back over his shoulder towards whence they came, kicking at a snowdrift. "It's funny: even after the Revolution, I loved Petersburg... long past the point where it stopped loving me." He sighed. "I've never really... belonged anywhere."
Mona smiled at him kindly. "You could belong here." At his quizzical look, she blushed and stammered out, "I mean, not here here. In the woods. That would be..." Now it was her turn to clear her throat. "I meant there. In Paris." With me, her brain traitorously thought, but didn't say.
Chandler smiled at her, and odd butterflies frolicked in her stomach. "How are you going to even find this person who left the inscription in your locket?" Gingerly, he fingered the pendant that hung around her neck. "It was etched on the gold, not inked, so it's not as though you can study the handwriting and try to trace it back to the person who wrote it! You don't even know who this person is!"
"I think she's family," Mona insisted, though he did raise a disconcerting point. Trying to find whoever had left her behind in Russia, and in a place as sprawling as the city of Paris, was going to be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Chandler raised an eyebrow. "You think or you know? And how do you know she's a she? It could be a he." He studied her with sympathy. "Your father?"
Mona shrugged. "All right, I don't know who I'm supposed to be looking for, exactly! That's what I'm hoping the Grand Duchess can help me with..."
"Mona:" Chandler stopped them both and took her by the shoulders. "Even if we get an audience with the Grand Duchess - and long-lost granddaughter or not, audition or not, that's a big if- you have to be prepared for the possibility that she might not be able to help you." His tone was sad for her.
Mona stared. "But... but she's royalty!"
"Mortal royalty only," Chandler pointed out. "But she'll have friends in valuable places. The Paris police, for instance. You could give them your locket."
Mona shied away, one hand closing around the pendant protectively. "Would I get it back?"
"I'm sure you would, and I understand, but even if we can't use the markings, it still may be our best clue. We could have the police trace it and find out who bought it."
Mona slowly nodded. It was a plan, at least. "... Thanks, Chandler." A pause, and then: "... What... what if after all of that, we still don't find who left me behind?"
Chandler ruminated on his bottom lip. "Well... if worse comes to worst... I - I was thinking..."
"Yes...?" Mona prompted.
"I - I mean, now that we've hopefully made a clean break from the Stasi, we could - that is... you and I..."
"Yes...?" Mona's voice lilted expectantly, a smile starting to tug at her lips. Her eyes searched his.
But before Chandler could lay down his proposal, a voice barked: "HEY, YOU TWO! KEEP UP! We haven't all day!"
Chandler blew out a puff of air, seething. "If he tells us to hurry up again, I'm gonna turn him into a big... fluffy hat..."
Mona giggled and looped her arm through his, tugging him along.
Many miles back, Comrade Joseph Tribbiani was dealing with steep snowdrifts of his own, both physically... and those made from the disturbing thoughts gathering in his own head like the new fallen snow.
His mind was just as much in a whirl as the snow flurries now cascading around him. Days ago, he had been at his office in Leningrad, when he had received orders from high command. His superiors suggested so high, that the order possibly had been handed down by none other than the Commisar himself. Comrade Tribbiani's orders were to follow the Anastasia imposter who had been spotted on a train bound for Paris in the company of two individuals matching the descriptions of Chandler Bingayev and Ross Popov. His mission: to ascertain if the striking sweet sweeper was truly the princess of all Imperial Russia, and if so... kill her.
Joseph had been stunned by the mission, and not just because it had required that he leave Leningrad immediatey, and on foot. Most of the roadways - the ones not blockaded by his comrades sealing the border - were impassable due to the winter storms, anyhow. No, what shook him most was the implication behind his directive: that there was enough of a possibility that the bewitching girl he'd met in his office might actually be the princess Monichivna...
And what if she was? Joseph was less concerned with how he was supposed to make that determination than what would be expected of him if he did: he would have to kill.
Throughout his long career in service of the Kremlin, through all his training, Joseph had never before been required to raise his hand against a woman, let alone his gun. And now he was supposed to shoot a fugitive, an enemy, of the state? One who might, by virture of her very possible bloodline, wield power equal to that of the state?
Could he do it, if circumstances called for it? Could he kill a daughter of Russia, perhaps the premier daughter of all Russia, when the moment came? More and more, Joseph was beginning to believe that his being tapped for this mission was no accident. Could he do what his father had done lo those many years ago and murder women and children? Massacre the royal family? Could he finish what the Kremlin was seeming to suggest his father had started but failed - or at least might have failed - to complete?
Had his father let her go, for some reason? Had she played dead, then crawled away? How could Monichivna possibly still be alive? How had she gotten away, if the rumors proved to indeed be true?
... How could he kill a young woman whom he was beginning to realize... he was in love with?
No true Russian man - no true Italian man, like him - should be able to fall in love with just one glance. But a single stare into those mesmerizing sapphire eyes, the Gelleroff eyes, and fall in love was exactly what Joseph had done.
Oh, he wished for all the world he hadn't called that girl back into his office! He wished he had never been mixed up in it! But still, duty... was before all!
Duty to what, however? The State? Or his heart?
Cresting over the peak of a snowbank, Joseph guarded his face against the winds as he glanced back, back the way he had come. Towards Russia. Towards home - his adopted home, perhaps, but even so...
He glanced back ahead, to where the girl - Mona - was. Towards Paris. His orders... and his love... were calling him there.
He sighed. Still...
Leaning into the buffeting winds, the broad Italian soldier pressed on. Love or not, whether this girl truly was the princess or not, he had his orders.
And whatever their reservations, good soldiers follow orders.
Mona started to feel a thrumming in her chest the moment they caught sight of the first farmland fields of the French countryside.
With every step, she felt the excitement building, until she was nearly in danger of quivering, and not from the winter's chill.
With every step, she was that much closer to perhaps finally, at long last, finding out who she was.
Once in the city, she would be expected to be someone she thought she wasn't, but someone who Chandler and Ross had been great at convincing her she could be. How long was the question. Whether it would glean any answers to the questions she sought was the real uncertainty.
Even if she couldn't help the Grand Duchess reunite with her family... perhaps she, Her Majesty, could help Mona find hers?
Heart, don't fail me now. Courage, don't desert me. Don't turn back, now that we're here... People always say life is full of choices. No one ever mentions... fear... Or how the world can seem so vast... on a journey to the past!...
Glancing back over his shoulder, Chandler's eyes met hers, and he gave her an encouraging grin, causing those butterflies in her stomach to start fluttering again, and she lengthened her stride to keep pace with him.
Somewhere down this road, I know someone's waiting - years of dreams just can't be wrong! Arms will open wide, I'll be safe and wanted, finally home where I belong! Well, starting now, I'm learning fast!... On this journey to the past...
Cresting over the next hill, Mona spotted the first dots of the skyline that portended the City of Love. Paris. At last! Glancing to Chandler, she watched him hold out his hand to her. Softly, she slipped her fingers into his until they intertwined.
Home. Love. Family. There was once a time I must have had them too... Home... love... Family... I will never be complete until I find you!... One step at a time. One hope, then another. Who knows where this road may go? Back to who I was, on to find my future! Things my heart still needs to know!... YES! Let this be a sign! Let this road be mine! Let it lead me to my past!...
Hand in hand, the con artist and the street sweeper struck forward after their nobleman friend, towards the city of Paris and whatever future awaited them there.
And bring me home!... At... last!...
