Waking Anastasia

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As always, for my mother, Ann, and my sisters, Katharine & Nancy, for their continued love & support.

In loving memory of Anastasia Nicholaievna Romanova, The Grand Duchess Shvibzik, who came to me in a dream and told me her story;

Of my grandfather, Major Horton Munro Reynolds, who was there at The House of Special Purpose in Ekaterinburg in the summer of 1918 with the Canadian Expeditionary Forces;

And of Patrick J. Wren & Sally-Ann (Sam) MacGillivray Wren, gone too soon.

Kharkiv, Ukraine. May, 1916.

WITH HER EVER-present Kodak Brownie camera in hand, fourteen-year-old Anastasia strolled a short distance away from the Imperial train while the crew replenished the locomotive’s tender with water from the adjacent tower. They were less than a day away from Livadiya and the grand summer palace, but she had been cooped up in the train for two days and was restless. Just that morning, she and her sister Tatiana had snapped at each other over the meaning of William Blake’s “The Divine Image” from their morning lesson. She took a long, deep breath of the crisp mountain air, yearning for even a hint of the mildly salty Black Sea hundreds of miles to the south.

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