Epilogue

Epilogue

April 1928

There is scarcely any movement around this part of Zhouzhuang, scarcely any sound at all to disturb Alisa Montagova as she kneels by the canal, folding yuánbǎo out of silver paper. She doesn’t think that they much resemble the ingots they are supposed to look like, but she is trying her best.

Today is the Qingming festival: Tomb-Sweeping Day. A day of veneration for ancestors who have passed away, for gravesite cleaning and praying and burning false money into the afterlife for the dead to use. Alisa has no ancestor to pray for in Shanghai. In Shanghai, there are only gravestones, laid side by side over empty graves.

Nobody had argued against it. With the explosion twelve months ago, the papers the next day had gotten ahold of a marriage certificate that sent the city into an uproar. A certificate that showed Roma Montagov and Juliette Cai married, bound together this whole time while the blood feud tore the streets apart.

Alisa adds another yuánbǎo to her pile. In truth, the certificate never existed. But Alisa heard their vows that night, eavesdropping instead of going to sleep. She had forged the document and sent it to the press. The blood feud may not have fallen apart immediately, but that was the first moment it started to fragment. If their heirs did not believe in the feud, why should the common people? If the heirs had died for each other, what was the basis for their people to keep fighting?

They had buried them together. There were no ashes, no bones. Kept apart in life, allowed together in death.

At the thought, Alisa sniffles suddenly, finding her nose to be running. She didn’t believe it. The first time she saw their gravesite, she had dived at the headstones, trying to carve the engravings right out.

“They’re not dead!” she screamed. “If you can’t find their bodies, they’re not dead!”

They said the explosion had been too hot. That they found the monsters because of how tough their skins were, that they found Dimitri Voronin body because of his distance from the blast. But no Roma and no Juliette.

Benedikt had to pull her off. He had to throw her over his shoulder so she wouldn’t dig the grave up, but even as he walked her away, her eyes remained pinned on the stones.

“They’re gone, Alisa,” Benedikt whispered. “I’m sorry. They’re gone.”

“How can they be gone?” She clutched her cousin, burying her face in his shoulder. “They were once the mightiest people in this city. How can they just be gone?”

“I’m sorry.” That was all Benedikt could say. Marshall crouched down beside them, offering his presence. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Those aren’t even their names, Alisa wanted to scream. Those headstones have the wrong names.

Now, she finishes her little pile of false money and gathers them into a tight circle. Twilight creeps deeper against the horizon, bathing the sky in orange. Alisa is here because she cannot stand the insincere gestures in Shanghai, cannot bear to join the crowds at the cemeteries, all the sobbing faces who didn’t even know her brother. Benedikt and Marshall had fled the city a month after the explosion. They wanted to take her with them to Moscow, where no one knew who they were, where no one had heard of the Montagovs and their legacy, where Kuomintang generals wouldn’t be on the hunt for them. Alisa refused. She wanted to know what happened to her father. She wanted to see what would happen to her city.

She hasn’t gotten any good answers. Her father remains missing, and the city slowly returns to normal. War rages through the country with no sign of ceasing, but Shanghai has always been a city in a bubble. War rages on, and the city tells the tale of Roma and Juliette like some folk song passed between rickshaw runners on their breaks. They speak of Roma Montagov and Juliette Cai as the ones who had dared to dream. And for that, in a city consumed by nightmares, they were cut down without mercy.

“Alisa Montagova, it is starting to get cold.”

Alisa turns around, squinting into the dark. “I’m almost done. I would have been faster if you had helped me fold.”

A grumble. “I will stay here. Don’t fall into the water.”

Alisa strikes a match, bringing it to the false money. She cups the flame so that the soft wind does not blow it away, her hand steady until an ember catches and flares to life.

Today, of all days, there will be crowds upon crowds tending to Roma and Juliette’s gravesite. Which is why Alisa has come here instead, to Zhouzhuang, where Roma once said he wanted to go. If the human soul has an afterlife, has a will, then his would be here for rest, and Alisa has no doubt that Juliette’s would follow.

It had been absolute hell trying to find a way out to this little township. Alisa no longer lives at White Flower headquarters. Headquarters doesn’t exist anymore, taken over by Nationalists and soldiers once the White Flowers were run out. Benedikt was immensely worried when he was leaving with Marshall, wondering what Alisa was going to do, where Alisa was going to go. She already had an answer for him. He hadn’t liked it, but he couldn’t stop her.

She became a Communist spy.

It isn’t that she cares all that much for the cause. It isn’t even that she likes the people very much, short of her superiors who decide her tasks, and on the occasion, drive her out into the countryside when she pouts for long enough. But she sees the city trying to revert to its old ways. She sees the lines and cracks growing and growing, and she wonders what it was all for, why her brother made such a sacrifice if nothing is going to change. The White Flowers are fractured beyond repair; the Scarlets have disintegrated. Lord Cai joined the ranks of the Kuomintang; the government sits steady. And yet this city hums with injustice. No true law, no true rule. Foreigners, lurking at the seams, waiting for the moment the Kuomintang missteps. Imperialists in other parts of the country, their armies at the ready, simply biding their time. Alisa is no expert in politics, but she is quick and nimble. She crawls in and out of hiding spaces before anyone can see her. She hears the reports of the Japanese taking land in the north. She hears the British and French plotting to consume what they can. For as long as the country is kept in chaos, the people fear the fates that they mourn in Roma and Juliette. For as long as hatred lurks in the waters, the story of Roma and Juliette starts anew.

And Alisa just wants them to have peace.

The sun sets over the horizon at last. Alisa watches the papers burn, letting the darkness fall around her. Soon it is only the burning fire that illuminates the canal. The flames reflect back in her dark eyes, warms the breeze that swirls about.

“I wish you could see it,” Alisa whispers into the night. “They find hope in your union. They wish not to fight anymore.”

The canal trembles with the wind. Its water sloshes, the only sound in the clearing. Most people in this small township have already retired for the evening, shuttering their windows and laying their heads to sleep.

“Alisa. I am growing wrinkles.”

“Don’t be dramatic, Celia.”

The fire has finally finished burning, so Alisa nudges at the ashes with her foot and turns to leave. Her superior is a few steps away, looking as if she is guarding the canal, but there is no one nearby to guard from, and besides, there is nothing in Zhouzhuang to worry about. She uses the term “superior” lightly—the others are far older, but Celia can’t be any more than nineteen, the only one who will put up with Alisa’s annoying requests. There has always been something familiar about Celia, as if Alisa has met her briefly before. But she can’t quite put her finger on how or when, at least in a way that makes sense.

Alisa bounds over. Even when she comes to a stop, Celia is watching the canal, her eyes scanning the darkness.

“You come into Zhouzhuang all the time on solo mission runs,” Alisa says, trying to sight what has taken up so much of Celia’s attention. “Are you afraid your contacts will spot me? Maybe they’ll want to work with me instead.”

Celia jerks her eyes to Alisa, taken aback. “How did you know that I come here?”

“You bring back buns with shop labels on them. Stop feeding me if you don’t want me to know where you’re going.”

A long exhale. Celia points a warning finger at Alisa. “Don’t tell. It’s off the record.”

Alisa mocks a salute. She doesn’t protest as Celia turns her around by the shoulders and pushes her to start walking. Their car is parked outside the township.

“It’s not a contact, then? Should we worry about being sighted?”

“Don’t even get me started on being sighted. Remember what I told you last month? My own sister started working for the top command within the Nationalists. We could get”—she imitates a pistol with her hands and makes a shooting noise—“sniped at any moment.”

Alisa giggles, but it trails off quickly, feeling out of place. Celia is trying to amuse her, but there was pain in that joke, still raw, still baffled. Celia has said nothing about who her sister is; she barely even shares any information about herself. All the same, Alisa feels her heart twist.

“Thanks for bringing me out here,” she says quietly. “I needed to do this.”

The canal makes a splash from behind them.

“He’s proud of you, you know.”

Alisa casts Celia a sidelong glance. “You didn’t even know Roma.”

“I just have a feeling. Come on. It’s going to take us forever to get back into the city.”

Without waiting, Celia rushes ahead, ducking under the waving branches of the trees and sidestepping the various herbs laid out to dry on the sidewalk. Alisa doesn’t know what it is in that moment—perhaps the moonlight as it grows brighter overhead, perhaps some movement sensed by the hairs at the back of her neck—but she turns around, glancing at the canal again.

There is just enough illumination to catch a fishing boat as it passes by, lighting the profiles of two people. Alisa catches a glimpse. A glimpse of a girl in a dress too nice, leaning over to kiss a boy with a face familiar. Then laughter—a light, airy laughter that echoes across the clearing. In seconds, the boat has drifted away, under the cover of a willow tree that sweeps over the canal, deeper into the maze of waterways that make up this quiet township.

Alisa turns back around.

For a second she only stands in stillness, staring into the night, not knowing what to do. Then she is crying—tears running down her cheeks too fast to bother catching. It is not sadness that strikes her but hope, hope that overwhelms her with such ferocity she remains rooted to the spot, unable to move a muscle in fear that this feeling will pass. She could run after them. She could chase along the canal, keep going and going until she finds the fishing boat. See them with her own two eyes and know.

Alisa doesn’t move. The wind dances around her, blows her hair into her eyes, making the strands stick to her wet cheeks. She would chase politicians until she understood their every move, she would chase top officials until she knew every last piece of their classified plan, but she would not chase this. She would rather hold this hope so close to her chest that it feels like a fire on its own, flickering against the darkness, flickering even where other embers burn out.

There will be hatred. There will be war. The country will fight itself to pieces. It will starve its people, ravage its land, poison its breath. Shanghai will fall and break and cry. But alongside everything, there has to be love—eternal, undying, enduring. Burn through vengeance and terror and warfare. Burn through everything that fuels the human heart and sears it red, burn through everything that covers the outside with hard muscle and tough sinew. Cut down deep and grab what beats beneath, and it is love that will survive after everything else has perished.

Alisa wipes her face with her sleeve. She takes a steadying breath.

“Don’t worry,” Alisa whispers. “We will be okay.”

And she hurries forward, away from the canal, returning to Shanghai once more.

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