Woke Up In A New Decade

Chapter Twenty One

Image: Grand duchess Maria Nikolaevna Romanov, 1909.

JUNE 1913

I was gleefully skipping around Auntie Olga's hallways in the palace. We were playing hide and seek, Olga and Alexei joined which took me by surprise. Anastasia was currently counting to twenty, I was passing one of the rooms when I overheard a private conversation between mama and papa. "She isn't herself, she looks so Danish compared to eight months ago. She doesn't look like our милый ангел. Your mother just turned her into someone else. She doesn't look or act like our daughter! We must take her back!" I heard mama cry.

"Sunny, you know that wouldn't be a good idea. Think of her and her health, think of what the Russian people will think, or the Russian court!" Papa explained. "We should have never skipped her pregnancy. We should've announced that she was going to be born to the public!" Mama protested. "Sunny, you know that wouldn't have been a good idea, think of what would have happened to Maria or Anastasia." "Nicky! I'm tired of the public viewing her as our distant cousin! She's OUR BABY!"

"Boo!" Suddenly, I felt two hands touch my back out of the blue. It sent shivers down my spine. I looked behind me in surprise to see little Anastasia. She gave me her famous smirk, "found you! You are very bad at hiding you know?" I started walking away from our parents room so they wouldn't hear us, with Anastasie following me. I just nodded giving her a small smile. "Have you found the big pair, Aloysha, Masha, Cian and Kiki yet?" I asked. Anastasia shook her head no. "But it would be easier to find them if you help me." She convinced me to help. Although at the beginning of the game one of the rules was the seeker couldn't get help from people already caught, I didn't care because I had to speak with Tatiana, Olga, Cian and Kiki urgently.

We found Kiki and Cian just standing there. "Oh no.." Cian said like a robot. We helped Anastasia and found Masha instead. Her spot was the worst, even worse than me, Kiki and Cian's and we were all just standing around in the open. She hid underneath a bed with her legs hanging out. She signalled us to be quiet and we all listened to what Anastasia motioned us to do.

We all took her leg and pulled her out. The once silent room turned into a murder scene. "SHVIBZIK! You little devil!" Maria shouted as she turned around and gave us a death stare. Cian and Kiki let go and stood there, with a 'the fuck?' expression. If looks could kill Anastasia would be triple dead. Nastenka laughed so hard she was clutching her stomach. The unfamiliar woman and two ladies in waiting rushed in with a look of panic.

"What is going on?" The woman demanded, a look of fury on her face. Maria got off the floor and brushed the flecks of dust off her dress. "We were playing hide and seek and Anastasia scared me, Madame." Maria explained calmly to the woman, despite looking as if she was going to burst into a thousand pieces, the woman nodded and shot Anastasia a glare of pure death. "If I hear anymore screams, I won't hesitate to punish you and tell your mother, Anastasia." The woman scolded her. "Yes Madame Fermor." Anastasia muttered, rolling her eyes nearly into the back of her head, obviously not taking the warning seriously and not caring at all about what the woman said.

The woman gave Anastasia one last deathly glare and left with the ladies in waiting following her. Anastasia turned to Maria and began laughing again while pointing her finger at her. Maria slapped Anastasia's finger away from her face. "Shvibzik! You are cheating! Asta, Ci and Kimmie aren't supposed to help you!" Maria scoffed. When Anastasia's laughter died down, she only gave Maria a shrug. "Do you know where the big pair hid? Asta, Ci and Ke seem to need them urgently." Anastasia told Maria, Maria's fave twisted into a deep thought. "I think I know where Olga went," Masha said. "I think she went to hide in one of the dining areas." Masha informed them. Anastasia started quickly leading the way to one of the closer dining rooms.

Cian, Kiki, Astrid and Maria trailed behind. "Who was that woman? Madame Fetus or something?" Cian asked Marie. Marie giggled. "Madame Fermor, Cian, Madame Fermor. She's our new governess." We all nodded our heads. "How is living in Denmark?" Maria asked me.

"It is nice, a bit boring though." I replied, scanning the rooms we passed, Cian did too. "Why do you feel that way?" Maria asked. "Well for starters, my sisters aren't there with me." I gave Marie a little nudge and she smiled. Her gaze dropped to the floor as if she had found something interesting instead of the walls of everything they walked past. "What else?" She wondered.

"Apart from my family not being there, I only have a few people I can socialise to, Cian, Caoimhe and my lady in waiting, Liesel." Maria nodded her head again, and processed the information silently and slowly. The only noise was their feet hitting the floor as they glided across the rooms. "You really miss us? Because I- we really miss you!" I smiled at her and we continued our long walk through the hallways. "Yes, I really do miss you all." Maria smiled and looked to Cian and Kiki. "Hey, you two, how's Denmark?" She asked. "Boring, I have Caoimhe but I miss Russia and Home. I missed the very cold weather and architecture." Cian said, Caoimhe nodded her head in agreement to his statement. They walked through the halls.

"Do you- are you-, well do you still-" Maria started to stutter and I looked at her in confusion. Cian realised what she wanted to ask me and answered for me. "Yes, they still see her as sick and yes she still goes to Church two days a week, but she seems to be getting better in their eyes." Cian explained. I did an 'o' mouth and Maria only answered silently. We started to approach the dining room Olga was supposedly in. The five of us searched around the dining room but saw no signs of anyone hiding in there. So we started our journey to the next. "What do you guys need to talk to the big pair about?" Maria asked Caoimhe. "It's nothing Masha. Don't worry,"

"Kimmie! I'm older than you, why can't you tell me! You can tell me what's going on." She pushed. "No it's nothing really." I said, Caoimhe backed up and hid behind Cian, Cian rubbed her hair. Anastasia was ahead of us, checking each room in case anybody playing hide and seek was hiding there. "No, I know it is something because I could tell by your face you look as if you have seen a ghost! But you insist on leaving me out, shutting me out. Before the incident we were so close, inseparable. Now all you do is talk to Cian and Caoimhe or the big pair. It's always Tanechka! Olishka! Ci! Kimmie! What about the little pair? It gets lonely Astrid, especially because Nastya is always with Alexei, I understand he is sick and deserves a lot of attention but I have absolutely nobody!" She cried. She finally broke, into pieces of glass when you shatter it. All of the things she kept hidden away was now loose. She stood in front of me, tears welling in her eyes.

"Wow, she's talking shit about us." Cian said. The siblings walked ahead to catch up with Anastasia, who was peeping through every doorway she saw and could go into. "Why do you keep pushing me away?" Maria muttered softly. I stayed silent, not breaking eye contact with her. Anastasia was so far ahead along with the siblings that Nastya couldn't hear her outburst. Cian had to run over with Kiki following. "Mashka! Ashka! Let's go!" Anastasia yelled. The both of us walked over to her, Cian and Kiki, we found anither room but to our avail, nobody was there. "Mashka! I thought you said Olya was in one of the dining rooms, did you lie?" Anastasia muttered frustratedly, Maria fell into defence mode. "That's what she told me! Maybe she's in the third dining room!" Maria sighed.  "Why is there so much dining rooms anyway?!" Cian yelled. We all shrugged.

We began to walk in silence again, Cian and Kiki came back and Maria apologised. They didn't seem to care. "Listen Maria, I am sorry. I had no idea what life was like for you before and after my coma. It's just- umm, right. It's just hard, because a lot of weird things are going on at once and it's stressful, I don't even think you know half of it. Explaining it would be really time consuming." I said. Maria looked at me with no sympathy. It hurt, "I have a lot of time but you can tell me later, what do you guys need to talk to the big pair about?"

Cian regarded Maria with cold piercing icy eyes. "They don't know she's your sister." Cian pointed to me, Maria looked at us all with a confused expression. "What!" "The Russian public doesn't know I'm your sister. They think I'm a distant cousin or  something like that." I simply stated. Maria had a baffled expression written and tied up together on her soft face. "How do you three know?" Kiki grinned. "We overheard it, Astrid was on the opposite side with one door, we were on the other. We were walking to our hiding spots and got distracted. They talk really loud by the way." Kiki said. I looked at Maria. "Did you know?" She shook her heads vigorously, with a look still full of confusion and baffled. She was speechless.

"I FOUND HER!" Nastenka suddenly yelled, her voice echoed and bounced through the hallways causing everyone to snap their heads to look at the loud little girl.