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.