Ricochet

Chapter 1

Not dead, I thought, as cold air touched my skin. I didn’t know much about Heaven or Hell, but I knew neither were thought to be drafty. The corner of my mouth lifted at the thought, until I began to remember, the images reshaping in my mind. There had been gunshots, my sisters’ screaming, and so much blood. Blood… Where was my brother? Where was I? I began to take inventory, noting that I seemed to be lying down, creaky boards beneath me- foggy headed, but unhurt. My eyelids felt heavy, my whole body felt heavy, as though I’d been pulled by a weak magnet through a pit of sand. Dragged away from the horrific execution that I seemed to have left behind. Cool metal sat heavily between my breasts- the locket. Rasputin. “When the times comes, malenkaya, you’ll escape,” he’d said when he gave it to me.

Eyes still heavy, my fingers found the locket. Once shaped as a heart, it was dented badly now, I thought, as I turned it in my hand and fluttered my eyes open. I inhaled quickly, seeing my own pale blue eyes staring back at me. No, not my eyes- “You’re awake!” my brother exclaimed, as I slung my fist into his face. Then Alexei’s nose was spurting blood, and I sprung to my feet, suddenly alert.

“Pizdets! Ach, come here!” He was reeling from the punch; I was immediately pinching his nose and tilting him forward. Swatting me away, he seemed more annoyed than afraid. His nose would keep bleeding but he was well versed in its management. I glanced around taking in my surroundings. We were in a neat but shabby sort of cabin, clearly someone’s home. I looked to Alexei, pale, covered in blood. “You’ve got a bit of something on your shirt, little brother, shall I find some rags?” Alexei grimaced, absurdly embarrassed for his utterly un-tsarevich appearance, and pointed down the hall with his free hand.

Under the pretense of seeking rags, I snooped about the cabin and called to my brother, “So where are we, do you think?” No answer. “And how do you think we got here?” Silence. Stubborn, spoiled svolach. “You know, I didn’t mean to-“ A single gunshot. A second. The words caught in my throat and I froze. If he was shot, anywhere, he would bleed and die.

“Ana?” My brother’s voice, shaky and wheezing, calling from down the hall. “Anastasia, I’ve shot someone. We need to go.”

The bleeding had stopped, finally, and we had stopped moving, finally. We’d had the sense to grab food and water before leaving the cabin and the body behind. Perched on a high rooftop, we were exhausted from running and climbing, and exhausted from all we’d endured before and after we’d woken up in the cabin. “They’re all dead, then.” Alexei was staring out over the city, towards… could it be the Winter Palace? “I saw mother and father shot, our sisters, and… I saw you shot, too, Ana.” He looked sideways towards me. “But you survived.”

I pulled the locket out from my collar. “The bullet struck here, but it ricocheted, and that’s the last I remember before waking up in this place. And why weren’t you blown to bits?”

He winced at the imagery, and I felt guilty for my insensitivity. He eyed the damaged locket curiously. “You’d had your hand on mine, I suppose… and brought me with you.”

As my mind wrestled with grief for my family and relief that our lives had been miraculously spared, I tried to find room in my brain to comprehend it all. Alexei continued to theorize, remarkably composed for the pompous little brat of a brother he usually was. He continued to gaze out over the city. “Rasputin was tending me once- I was bleeding too much again. And I was… sad. I was realizing that I might not live to be tsar, that I might not live long at all.” He met my eye. “So our old friend was trying to comfort me, I suppose- he told me unfathomable things. About infinite worlds, infinite possibilities. He said that every version of reality we could imagine exists, in side-by-side worlds. So in another reality, or in many, I would live to be tsar.” I followed. The old staret had told me these things, too. But he’d told me many things that I hadn’t believed. Could it be that as the bullet struck the locket, we had ricocheted- to another world?

I looked to Alexei. “And? Did that comfort you? That in some world you’ll never see, another version of yourself wouldn’t bleed out before adulthood?” My crassness didn’t bother him this time, he held my gaze.

“It does now. Because I believe we’ve arrived in such a world.”