Chapter one

          My earliest memories were those of playing in the orphanage with the other kids. None of us may have had families but we were never unhappy, we were each other's family.

          The orphanage was a small building located several miles south of St Petersburg. It was an uninspired boxy two story building that was painted a revolting color of green that would always remind you of ...... well let's just say it wasn't spring grass. The inside was nothing to write home about either. The ground floor only contained a kitchen, a dining room, rooms for the adults and a nursery for the youngest children. The upper floor had two large rooms filled with beds, one for younger kids and the other for the older children.

          Whatever you might say about the building we wouldn't have ever moved even for the biggest mansion on earth. The reason all the kids loved it so much was that the building was built on a very short hill with a very gentle slope surrounded by a flat field with nothing but grass and small shrubs for miles. To us it was the biggest and best playground ever. In spring it would be blanketed by flowers of every color whose origins would always baffle us. We would run around plucking them and weaving them into flower jewelry. I especially liked to put on a crown of yellow flowers similar to daffodils that complemented my blond hair(this is not a mistake, it is part of the story). In winter the same field would be covered in snow and we would spend our days having epic snowball fights and building snow forts and snow castles.

                  Our orphanage was run by a stern old woman named Vasilisa Blatova along with her two daughters Alexandra and Veronica. Vasilisa, who we were told to call Ms Blatova at all times, was the authoritarian in the orphanage, she was a school teacher before she retired and opened the orphanage so nothing got past her. She was a woman in her late sixties, but don't let that fool you. She looked quite intimidating with her steel gray hair done up in a tight ponytail and eyes of the same color that looked at you from above her small red glasses that slid dangerously low down her long nose if you did something wrong. Most kids were terrified of what was known as 'the arctic Blatov glare' and tried to behave as much as possible but kids are kids and we all ended up getting the glare a time or two.

                    Alexandra and Veronica were the carrot to Vasilisa's stick. They were twin sisters around their mid thirties who had blond hair and blue eyes. Both were slightly over weight , especially Veronica, but to us there was just more of them to love. Alexandra was a nurse before her mother opened the orphanage. She was the one who treated our 'ouchies' and 'booboos'. She was always gentle and caring. She was the one who usually reads us our bed time stories as we fell asleep. Veronica was the cook of the orphanage, and she had a special place in our hearts that only a person that feeds you could occupy. She not only fed us delicious food but also snuck us sweets on special occasions.

                   I had spent six years in the Blatova orphanage, I was sent here from the very beginning and was now six years old. I had shoulder length blond hair and green eyes, I was slightly on the short side and thanks to Veronica's efforts slightly chubby. I was a happy child and had many friends, but my best friend was Anastasia who we all called Anna. She was a waif of a girl with long black hair. She looked small and harmless like a mouse but had the tendency to attract trouble. Like most good friendships we had a balance , she would try to push me to do fun things and I would try to stop her from doing stupid things ,which didn't always work. Let's just say she succeeded more times than I did. This was one of those times.

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                 We were outside on the field surrounded by everyone and Ms Blatova was looking at us over the top of her small red glasses with her signature arctic stare. It might not seem like a very big deal but to the six year old me it felt like I was an ant being burned under a magnifying glass.

                "So let me get this straight, you used the ironing board to slide down the side of the hill and up a ramp you constructed out of rocks you piled up and launched yourselves onto a landing zone you made by piling up a heap of clothing that Veronica had just cleaned. Did I miss anything Anna , Peter ? "

                 I wanted to disappear into the ground so badly, I was staring at the ground trying to will it to just swallow me whole. I could see the feet of Ms Blatova and they were shaking in fury. Each of her words sounded like nails on my coffin. She looked so upset that I thought that this time she might actually kill us.

                Anna was not as intimidated as I was, she looked Ms Blatova right in her frigid gray eyes and said, " We didn't hurt anybody, we were just having fun."

                 I almost fainted right then and there, the circle of spectators actually gasped and took a step back. I didn't have that option , I just stood there rooted to my spot waiting for the bomb that was Ms Blatova to explode and exterminate all life on earth. You never, and I mean never talk back to Ms Blatova when she is chastising you. There are many stories about the last girl that talked back to her, none of them ended well for the girl. So I stood there with my little six year old life flashing before my eyes and wondering how it was all going to end when something strange happened.

                I was just standing there looking down on the ground and Ms Blatova's legs when the legs suddenly blurred. I rubbed my eyes to get them back into focus but it got even worse. It was like I was seeing countless images of the same leg transposed over the same leg again and again, but each was a little different creating a blurring effect. I tried to make it go away but I couldn't even look away and whatever I tried the leg remained blurry. While I was looking at the leg trying to bring it back into focus I noticed something strange about the image that was most prominent. The image that was easiest to see was somehow wrong in my eyes , it felt wrong like hearing a discordant note in a symphony. I was a little six years old girl, so I did what any six year old girl would do I decided to look at a version that didn't feel wrong. After I chose one and focused on it , it became clearer and clearer until all the other images were gone. I suddenly felt very weak and fell back on my ass. Before long Alexandra had me cradled in her lap and was waving a piece of paper in my face like a fan. My eyes wandered around looking at the concerned faces of everyone around me until they landed on a pair of cold gray eyes that were opened wide in disbelief. Looking at those eyes made me remember something, earlier I thought that Ms Blatova was shaking out of anger but that wasn't true, she always shook when she stood up on her feet.

            She wasn't shaking now.