The City in White

SPRING 2026, NOVELETTE, 8200 WORDS

“We will die and we will be free.”
—slogan chanted during the Romanian revolution in December 1989

Zoe

“It snowed again,” my sister says. She’s lying on the diamond-tiled floor of our hallway and I dab at her forehead with a warm cloth. Small ice crystals hang onto her eyelashes. Her skin has that unnatural shimmer about it.

“Thought things would be better here,” she says.

I don’t respond to that. What could I say? We’re here because of her. Because of her we live out of boxes and eat our lunch at the kitchen counter.

This city means something to her and nothing to me.

When the train pulled into North Station, she looked out the window as though she could see into the past. She’s got ten years on me, in that cramped apartment I’ve only seen in black-and-white photos. Ten years with our parents, with their faces and voices and stories, while I have none. I bet each one of us thinks the other has it easier, though everyone else simply says: how terrible, you were both so little.

But it’s been thirty years and I don’t like to think about it, there’s no point. I take my sister’s hands and pull her up. Water streams from her hair down the front of her jumper, but she doesn’t seem to notice. I get her a towel and go to make coffee. It’s early, and a gloomy sort of light sifts through the lace curtains.

She pads into the kitchen, twisting the towel around her hair.

“I can’t remember the last time it snowed in December.”

A sharp cold air still clings to her and makes me shiver. I light the stove and warm my hands over the blue gas flame. It’s an old apartment, the cheapest we could find. The radiators barely work; the windows rattle with every passing streetcar.

“This one, it felt different,” she says.

“Do you want coffee?”

“Zoe,” she begins, but doesn’t keep going. I let the silence stretch.

She always wants to talk after the snow, even though she knows, after so many winters: I won’t abandon her; I’ll be there when she comes back sick and dazed and shivering, with snow in her hair; but I won’t hear about it. I want no part of it.

She takes out two mugs and places them on the counter next to me. “We should go to the cemetery,” she says.

“Don’t be silly,” I snap. “What if it snows again?”

She nods, and for a moment I see the graves, the twin white headstones, as clearly as the first time we went. We used to visit them every year with our grandmother, but it’s been a long time now.

“We should get a start on these boxes,” I say more gently.

The smell of coffee fills the kitchen and chases the cold away. Someone outside is blasting terrible folk music, and we sing along as we unpack.

Maybe it’s not that different from our old house, this place.

Lia

All day, opening boxes and putting together whatever furniture we’d managed to have shipped, cleaning our kitchen things and wrestling our clothes into the tiny closet, I couldn’t shake it off, this little fear in my chest, this little pressure, like it’s about to happen again: it’s about to snow and without knowing I’ll find myself in the City. My skin felt hot and clammy, and Zoe insisted on closing the windows. But it didn’t snow, and by sunset the sky cleared and the apartment filled with pinkish light.

There was one box we didn’t open, a small light box wrapped in tape; we got to it at the end. When I picked up the scissors, Zoe looked at the clock we’d just hung up, said it was dinner time. Then she took the box and put it on top of a kitchen cabinet.

She can keep her secrets; I would never ask her about it, not after all the years we’ve lived together, and especially not on a snow day. She’s got so little space to live on days like this.

After dinner, I show her the forecast and convince her to go for a walk. She doesn’t like the city, resents us moving back here, but it’ll grow on her, I’m sure of it. Even though this is not a neighbourhood I remember, even though almost everything in the city has changed, there’s something here, in the looming concrete towers, the ribbons of traffic, the snow already turned to slush on the sidewalks. Smells of fresh bread and exhaust fumes that could be anywhere and yet there is something about them, only here. I wish she remembered. When we left she was only a baby: there’s a picture of me holding her that spring at our grandmother’s house, and she’s so tiny, you can barely make out her face.

We’re about to cross the road into a park, but Zoe says she wants to go home.

“You can go,” I tell her, “don’t worry.” She looks up at the cloudless, starless sky and nods. Picking her way through the slush, wrapped up in her puffy winter jacket, she looks like she belongs here, and I lose her in the crowd rushing out of a subway station.

In the park I walk through untouched snow under the trees and there’s a feeling of being let down. It’s always like this after the snow stops falling, the white so dull it looks almost grey, striped with shadows under the streetlights. I long for fresh bright snowfall and know I shouldn’t.

Soon I turn back home—already I think of it this way; our building looks so much like the one we used to live in. On a bench by the front door, an old woman smokes and watches people walk by.

“You just move in?”

“12B,” I tell her. “Me and my sister.”

She exhales, and the smoke twists and frays in the air.

“I had a sister. Buried her long ago. Two sons, visit when they can. Good you take care of each other.”

The words sting a little, I don’t quite know why. I walk up to the door and look for my keys.

“It’s a hard city, this,” says the woman.

Zoe

The snow let up this week and I try to breathe. To live a little, like my sister says. Maybe even more than she expected: today I met a woman and brought her home. It helps that we’ve got a table and chairs now, and that my sister is out shopping for the dozens of things we still need, like lightbulbs and table salt.

But me and my new friend, we make do.

She’s lovely, so I try not to resent it when she says, “I love your accent.” I guess it’s better than the way I feel about hers. People in this city, it’s like they try their hardest to sound tough and in a hurry.

Luckily, Maia is soft and slow in the ways that matter.

“I’m glad you moved here,” she says, tracing my clavicle with her finger, and I’m almost ready to agree.

We wear loose T-shirts in the kitchen and make tea. She’s taller, so she reaches for the honey on the top shelf while I pour the tea and watch her light hair sway. But the cabinet is old and wobbly; when she closes the door, the box on top of it comes down. The cardboard rips and the old notebooks inside thud to the floor.

“Sorry, let me—”

“Leave them,” I tell her, and there must be something in my voice. She stands aside, both hands around her mug, while I pick up the notebooks and place them on the counter. She drinks the tea so quickly, I’m sure it scalds her tongue.

We kiss in the doorway. I do my best to act sweet, but I’m not sure it works. I think I spooked her. Still, she says, “I’ll see you soon,” and I try to believe it.

After she’s gone, I step into the kitchen. Dusk softens the old painted cabinets and the yellowed walls. I sort through the stack of notebooks, each labeled with a handwritten year inside the front cover.

I never told my sister I’d found them while packing up our grandmother’s house. Maybe I was afraid of the way she’d pore over them, she’d drink in every word and spit it back at me.

But now, back here where we all lived, where it all happened, maybe I can finally dare look.

January 10, 1987

There were oranges today. Made it to the store early and got two, a little yellow, but they’ll ripen on the windowsill. Lia asked if we could plant the seeds and grow a little orange tree of our own. They’ve been doing botany at school.

I can’t believe how fast our little lark is growing.

It happened again on the way back from the store. Cut through a snowy alley and all of a sudden I was There. I’m beginning to be able to sense it, to know which way to take. But sometimes it’s hard to come back. Sometimes I don’t really want to

I haven’t told Paul yet. I don’t know what he’ll make of it. He’ll think I’m losing my mind. Some days I think so myself.

Lia

I’m awake when the quiet of the apartment—radiators whistling and window frames creaking and Zoe’s soft snoring next door—turns into the quiet before snowfall. The space between sounds swells, heavy and soft, until I can barely breathe for pressure, and there’s a thrumming in my ears that grows and grows. The curtains sway and it’s coming for me: the night sky hanging low, silvery grey, the outside flooding in, the creeping cold. Silently, I slip into the City.

Under the streetlights, in the quiet, the snow settles, and with every breeze white fires tremble across the drifts. Above me soar church towers carved in ice and the spiderweb of electric wires glittering and poplars like pale candles burning. It’s the same city and not the same, the city drained of its gritty, murky substance, emptied of its concrete bones, muted and rarefied. It’s the City in white.

Past snow-covered cars, across empty avenues I walk, and I know where I’m going. No footprints in the snow, I step so lightly. No rustle, every crystal left intact.

Cross the frozen river, snowflakes dancing on the black. People float past me like shadows smiling but I don’t stop, not tonight. Tonight I’ll make it home. I’ve never found my way back, not since the first time I entered the City, but I sense it now. This is why I wanted us to move here, and I can tell it’s working.

Cross the street, wander down familiar alleys, almost there. I look out for the row of maples—I remember them like it was yesterday—but the alleys snake between low-rises with no trees in front, only children playing quietly like wisps of smoke. I cut through a thicket of yews, needles wrapped in white and the dark beads of berries, and the snow piles high and heavy and I can’t walk fast enough.

I stop, panting; look around and don’t know where I am; could be anywhere in the City, all my memories are muddled. I begin to understand that I won’t make it, not this time.

The snow keeps falling and it doesn’t make a sound.

Zoe

“What good does it do, being here?”

I say this when my sister can’t hear me. I don’t dare repeat it when she can. The bluish tinge won’t leave her cheeks, and her eyes still have that distant look. As far as I can tell, she’s only getting worse since we moved here. Two days after the snow, she’s still in bed. Still lives on soup I make her eat as often as I can. Shivers all the time under the blankets.

“I was close that time,” she whispers when I go to check on her. “Zoe, I almost got there.”

I push a mug of tea into her hands. “Drink before it gets cold,” I tell her, and I leave the room before she can say more. Worry curdles to anger in my stomach, and I can’t stand being near her.

I close the door to my bedroom, unlock the desk drawer, take out the old notebook. My hand hovers over the faded leather cover. I’m scared of what I’ll read and of what my sister would say if she knew. But when I flip through the pages and pore over our mother’s angled cursive, it feels good. Like somehow this way I’m getting back at Lia.

January 21, 1987

I saw G. today.

Only a few months ago we mourned him. He had vanished, they announced he’d fled the country, his name became one we couldn’t speak. But we knew what had really happened, there were rumours. Around Christmas we hosted a small gathering at our apartment, we lit candles and said a few words for him.

This morning it snowed and I went There on purpose. It’s easiest to cross on snowy days. I like to walk down the white streets and watch the people, how the snow seems to fall right through them. They don’t carry shopping bags or look at what you’re carrying as they pass. They look you in the eye instead.

I crossed the park and saw G. sitting on a bench. He looked younger than I knew him, his face suffused with a soft gleam. When he saw me he stood up and opened his arms wide, and a cold gust of wind embraced us both.

We walked together and talked about everything. Not about what had happened to him; people don’t talk about things like that, not even There. But he told me about the people he’d seen, his long-gone parents and grandparents. He seemed happy, worried about us if anything. About the ones back home.

After I returned I kept looking over my shoulder. It felt like someone was watching me. But I’ve had that feeling before; who hasn’t?

I have to tell Paul. G. was like a brother to him, I can’t put it off any longer. We have to go There together.

My sister knocks on the door and I quickly put away the notebook.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, and I pretend it’s nothing. The words I just read crawl up my skin, burn in my cheeks. It can’t be that, I tell myself. It’s only Lia who’s strange, she’s always been that way, it’s an affliction, it’s unfortunate but she can’t help it, our mother hadn’t been that way. Had she?

Lia offers me coffee and I can’t look her in the eye. I should tell her; we should read the diaries together, but I can’t do it, not yet. She got a whole childhood with our mother. The diaries are all I got.

“It’s good that we’re here,” she says. “I can feel it.” She puts her hand on mine. Her skin is cold and I don’t know if it’s because our windows don’t close properly or because she’s still unwell.

“We really should’ve moved somewhere warmer.”

She laughs like she always does when I say this. Even back when I used to mean it, she laughed this way. That was how I understood that she would never willingly choose to leave the snow behind.

So many things I know about my sister I’ve learned this way, without words. I used to think it was a strength of ours, but now I’m not so sure.

The apartment feels suddenly too small, so I go out, but even outside there isn’t enough air. The city hums and breathes, coils tight around me. I text Maia and I’m surprised when she agrees to meet me.

We get a babka at Capșa and walk along the avenue, the cold biting at our entwined fingers. I like the way she talks about the future, about the city, with a mix of ire and hope. “Has it grown on you yet?” she asks me, and I tell her about grandmother’s house in the country, about the bright wide summers in the hills, but she shakes her head.

“Just you wait,” she says, smiling. “You were born here, this city’s in your blood.”

Dark clouds have gathered in the distance, and the wind from the east numbs the skin.

“I’m going to miss it when I leave,” Maia says. “I mean, it’s still a while away. But it’s going to happen at some point. Half my family’s abroad, and it’s getting too hard.”

I look up into the swirling sky. The city has grown quiet, as though it’s waiting for something, and the air smells like snow.

Lia

For most of the day I’ve kept away from Zoe; she often gets morose after a snowfall, there’s nothing to do but give her space; but this is the first day I’ve felt like myself again, and all this energy threatens to burst out of me. After Zoe goes out, I dig up an old recipe, and for a while all I do is crack eggs and whisk and fold and knead, a dusting of flour falling gently across the counters, cheesy old ballads playing on my phone. At the end of it there are two loaves of sweetbread and nobody to share them with, so I take one to our neighbour downstairs.

She opens the door with a cigarette in her hand, lowers her glasses. “I know you. 12B, yes?” I nod and offer up the tray of sweetbread. “Come have a coffee.”

The apartment is smaller than ours, dark with heavy floral curtains and oil paintings. In the corners, spots of damp crawl up like spiders, and the smell of smoke mixes with the incense burning in a bamboo holder. While she makes the coffee, I look at the framed pictures on her shelves.

“Is that your sister?”

She places two gilt-edged cups on a fuzzy ottoman and squints at the picture. Two women wearing hats and scarves, laughing in the backseat of a car. “Lost her in the winter of ’88,” she says. “Rough winter, that. Used to sleep in the kitchen to keep warm.”

The coffee is strong, the room is warm, and through the curls of cigarette smoke it all looks like it’s trembling, paintings and bookcases and my neighbour, who’s looking at me, nodding, for a while.

“You look like you know about rough winters,” she says.

Under her sharp gaze, I close my eyes. “That’s a strange thing to say,” I manage. She laughs and the laugh turns into a harsh, chesty cough that lasts a long time.

When she can speak again, she says, “Winter’s good. The cold clears your head. The snow shows you the way. Winter’s when we remember, we who are old enough, don’t you think?”

She takes a piece of sweetbread and chews slowly. I only watch; I don’t know what to say. A headache’s thrumming deep inside my head.

“What’s strange,” she says after a while, “is that we don’t talk about it all the time.”

After I leave our neighbour’s apartment, I don’t go back home. Instead I step outside, into the gloomy afternoon, the street like a charcoal drawing, and there’s a crispness to the air, a soft pressure in my ears. My headache clears, little by little, and I think: now’s the time to go back, to see the place where I grew up. True, Zoe’s not here, and I always imagined we’d go together; and I imagined us talking, talking for hours, and then the snow would fall—but it’s time to let go. Zoe doesn’t like to look back on the past.

I, on the other hand, have no choice.

I still know where it is. The name of the subway stop changed some years ago, along with a few others that had clung to long-gone places and institutions, but the little side street is almost the same. We’ve come here a few times with our grandmother. On weekend trips, after the cemetery, sometimes we’d take the subway or drive past, even though it’s all the way across the city; but it’s been so many years now, I’m afraid it’ll all be different. And when I find the building, it is different, though at first I can’t quite tell why.

The door is the same: big, metallic, rust-red. But when I look up at the windows (their faces, I don’t quite remember, shadows behind glass), they’re all new: wood effect frames and bright Roman blinds, incongruous with the exterior, freshly painted a greyish yellow that tries and fails to be cheerful. In the dull afternoon it’s the same as any other building, behind those windows lives some other family, big gaming chairs crammed in the teens’ tiny bedrooms, the narrow kitchen full of new appliances that can’t be run all at once. Someone walks out through the front door and I squeeze past them into the building, maybe just to get away from that view; and I walk up the concrete stairs, turn left and there it is, number 9, I can’t get any closer than this—now, surely, I will feel something. But I stare at the door, plain wood with a brass 9 below the peephole, and I realize I don’t remember. I don’t remember what the door looked like. And cooking smells waft under doors and there are voices and clangs and the noise of a TV, and there’s nothing here, I feel stupid. They’re not here, they’re here less than anywhere else.

When I get outside and look up, the clouds have begun to scatter, and I can no longer sense even a hint of snow.

Zoe

The truth is I can’t stay mad at Lia for long. She looks better today: rosy-faced and cheerful, like the city’s giving her life. Besides, the sky is a rare light blue, and people are streaming into the parks and the holiday markets.

So I cave and we take the subway north. She says she wants to show me the lake, and we walk in the Japanese Garden. The dregs of snow under the cherries crunch underfoot. “Okay, it’s not so bad,” I say and put my arm around my sister’s. It’s quiet here despite all the people running and cycling and walking, like the place is big enough and old enough to absorb them all.

The path winds around the lakeshore, under weeping willows. “We used to come here when I was little,” says my sister. “Swam in the summer. Took the boat once across the lake.”

I stop and look at the pale, still water. Jackdaws cry out, circling high under the clouds that have gathered without warning. The air is so crisp it hurts to breathe.

The first flakes twist slowly in the air.

For a second it’s like I’m little again and snow is only snow, uncomplicated. Then I remember. I look around for my sister, but she’s no longer next to me. There’s nobody on the path ahead and already the snowfall thickens. “Lia,” I call, my voice odd and muffled, and I run down the path, slipping in the light fresh snow.

There she is, by the lake, head tilted to the sky, snow falling fast around her in big irregular flakes like scraps of torn paper. Under her feet a strip of gleaming ice arcs towards the lake, and she steps onto it like onto a bridge. “Lia,” I call again, but I can hardly hear myself. I must act now, grab her and pull her back, or follow her wherever she’s going. She’s walking away and the snow falls so heavy now it obscures her almost completely. But my feet are rooted to the spot and I do nothing.

It’s only the second time I ever watched her go into the snow.

The first time I was seven, the winter before she left for college. A quiet night, watching the snowfall from my bedroom window. I saw Lia step into the yard in her nightdress and the snow all drawn to her like swarming flies. Then, too, I stood still until she vanished. After that I didn’t sleep all night, worried that she’d never come back. But she did, she always would. I looked into her pale face over breakfast, her eyes wide and dark, while our grandmother talked about the weather, and I didn’t say anything at all.

January 30, 1987

Told Paul today. He didn’t believe me, so I showed him.

Since our wedding day there hasn’t been a time I’ve felt so close to him. Walking There in the gentle snowfall, free away from everything.

We talked to G. for a long time and an idea took shape in my mind. And when I looked at Paul I saw he was thinking the same but he was terrified. I squeezed his hand before I voiced it. After all, I said, here is this place that we can cross into and nobody knows, nobody can track us. There are no border guards. No rivers to swim across. And the crossing’s getting easier, I’m learning how to do it anytime I want to.

Think how many we could help, I said.

“That’s not what the place is for,” Paul objected, and looked at G., whose face just then was rippling and wavering like fog.

“The place is for you,” G. answered, “it’s yours, you made it. It’s certainly not ours, we’re here because of you. We’re not even here.”

(The last words I might have misheard; his voice sounded like a gust of wind.)

I squeezed Paul’s hand again and he nodded, heavily. I know he was thinking about Lia, my own chest tightened when I thought about her. If something should go wrong. “It’s easy,” I reassured him. “I myself crossed so many times. We won’t get caught.”

In the silence that followed I thought about the rumours we’d heard just that morning, another body fished out of the Danube. Paul said, “We could come here too.” And I said, sure, if we need to, if anything goes wrong, we can always come here, and we can bring Lia. See, there’s nothing to worry about.

The kitchen light flickers and I can barely read the words anymore. I rub my eyes. The oven clock shows five past ten and there’s no sound except the humming of old pipes.

The snow stopped hours ago, but she’s not back yet.

I should go to bed. In the morning I’ll hear her get in as she always does, without turning the key or opening the door. She’ll crumple to the floor and I’ll warm up a towel to wrap around her, and wake her gently from that cold white sleep.

This is what we’ve been doing for a decade. Ever since our grandmother died, since Lia dropped out of college and moved back in with me.

She took care of me that fall. Through the funeral and the memorials and the visits of relatives I barely knew and the meetings at the bank. Through the sorting of clothes and books and the house repairs. All through that fall she took care of everything; and when winter came, I took care of her.

I walk to the window. The evening is quiet and the street below is white, furrowed with tire tracks, and suddenly I can’t wait anymore. I put on coat, boots, and take the stairs two at a time. I hurry across the lobby and bump into someone, a woman smelling strongly of cigarettes.

“You from 12B?” she says. I try to walk away, but she stops me. “There’s a lot of snow out there. Your sister—”

“Have you seen her?”

I look at her for the first time, into the beady eyes buried in folds of skin.

“You can go there,” she whispers. “You can go there with her anytime you want.”

She squeezes my arm, but I push past her, through the rusty front door and down the stairs. The fresh snow crackles gently underfoot, and there, steps away, is my sister, leaning on the wall with her eyes closed.

“Barely made it,” she says. Her breath is fast and shallow. She rests her head on my shoulder, and her hair snakes down my neck and makes me shiver. There’s a light behind the film of her eyelids, a pale glow spreading to her cheeks, bright enough that I worry others will notice.

We climb the front steps slowly. There’s nobody in the lobby now, and I chase the woman’s words out of my mind.

Lia

More than usual, I’ve felt apologetic, and acted apologetic too: tiptoeing around Zoe, probing her state of mind with gentle words. You’d think she was the eldest, and I a child caught doing something wrong. I’ve often felt like this after the snow, but now I wonder: am I doing something wrong?

She’s never wanted to talk about it; always looked the other way, as though it were shameful. With every snowfall I took longer to find my way back home, and the cold took longer to leave my body, and she cared for me. As though I’d been in a tragic accident or had some kind of illness. Some days I want to scream at her. I want to pull her by the hand into a blizzard and say, Zoe, open your eyes, grow up with me.

But maybe I’m the one who’s never really grown up.

Today I’m making soup for us, rich and sour, yellow like summer. Break the eggs like little round suns, one by one. Mix in the fresh cream. It’s been warm this week, temperatures above zero even at night. I can tell Zoe’s been sleeping easier. As for me, I don’t know; I never know quite how I feel without the snow.

I pour the soup into a bowl and cover it in parsley, then take it to Zoe in her bedroom.

When I push the door open with my elbow, she jumps. “Don’t you knock?”

There’s an open notebook on the desk behind her, yellowed pages covered in fountain pen cursive, faded and familiar. I place the bowl on the desk and look closer.

“This is mother’s handwriting.”

“Let me explain, Lia.”

“I want to see.”

“I found them in a box in grandma’s attic, and I didn’t think you would— I didn’t know—”

“I want to see.”

I pick up the notebook, carefully, and Zoe watches and doesn’t stop me, doesn’t say another word.

March 12, 1987

The weeks feel like years. And yet I feel young somehow, younger than I have in a long time. The chicory coffee tastes better in the morning, and every time Paul touches me it feels electric, even Lia can tell, she says we’re nauseating. We stay up late talking in whispers. Through the long workdays and the evenings without electricity or water, our secret keeps us going. We look at our child and think: one day, you will live better. One day soon.

We can make our own way There now, snow or no snow. G. helped us figure it out. Our neighbour was the first one we helped cross; she has a son who left the country and never came back; after a while she began to notice the signs, the telephone clicking and the black cars parked down the road, so we took her There. They came to search her apartment a few days later but never found anything. Our crossings don’t leave any traces.

We visit her often and bring her news and she says, one day my son will come back and so will I.

Since then we’ve helped a few others. Some didn’t want to go, said they couldn’t imagine leaving. For a few it was too late; we’d meet them There later, wandering the white streets, and the snow would fall right through them.

Sometimes it hits us, how dangerous it is. Lia knows not to repeat anything she hears at home, but we’re careful not to say much around her. You never know the things a child can understand.

Paul doesn’t even want me to write about it. There’s danger in it, I know; but it feels protective, too, like a secret safe. We’re so fragile, all we do is fragile, one wrong step and it’ll all blow away like dust. But these words, they’re indestructible.

Zoe

I’m waiting for Maia. Pacing back and forth, watching the subway exit that spits out a fresh crowd every two minutes. Smells of barbecue and mulled wine waft from the Christmas market in the square. My hands are cold, clenched around my purse with the notebook inside.

I took it back from Lia. Walked into the kitchen and snatched it from her hands, and she just stood there, not knowing how to react. It was probably the closest we’ve ever come to physically fighting. Even as kids, we never fought; she was too much older than me, and we never got to play together or argue over toys. When I took the notebook, my nails grazed the back of her hand and I knew I’d crossed a line. I felt my face burn. Turned and left without a word.

Someone taps me on the shoulder and I smell Maia’s citrusy scent. She envelops me in a big winter jacket hug and asks me what happened. If I’m honest, I don’t know why she keeps showing up for me. I’m not sure I would if I were her.

We walk up the avenue between rows of bare trees and I tell her a little about Lia. She takes me to her house, one of those half-crumbling little buildings in the old town, with a small yard and a fence. She was born here; her parents lived in that house before moving away from the city; but she’s already preparing to leave it. There are boxes full of books stacked in the hallway, pale patches of wall where art used to hang.

“You can stay here as long as you need.”

She places two mugs of tea on the table. Honeysuckle, with thick slices of lemon floating in it.

“My brother moved to France five years ago,” she says. “Visits once a year, sometimes twice. We talk often, but even so, you know. It’s not the same.”

A pattern of peaches and apples twists across the vinyl tablecloth and fades in the sunlight slanting through the kitchen window. She’s got lacy café curtains on it, and a patterned backsplash under white cabinets, and it feels like I’ve gone back in time.

“There’s no one left here,” she says, “at least it feels that way. Half the people I knew have left the country. Sometimes it feels like I love a city that used to be.”

She leans into me on the narrow bench. “You know, I can’t imagine what you have, you and your sister. Feels like families never get to stay in the same place.”

She smiles and I swallow back a sharp reply. At first I’m sure that I’m annoyed at her, at her presumption. Then I look at her profile, the light flyaway hair catching the sun, and I realize it’s me that I’m annoyed with.

And suddenly it’s cold and I’m far away from it all, from Maia and the sunlight and the scent of honeysuckle. I see her in my mind, Lia, that first time: how she stepped out into the yard in her nightdress; how the falling snow gathered around her; and I was seven years old, watching from my window. I see it clearly and for the first time I remember how under the streetlight she turned back, her face tilted up, shining in the light; and she pointed her hand toward me, toward my window, and beckoned, and despite the snow I saw clearly the broad smile on her face.

I didn’t move.

Eventually she turned away and vanished in the whiteness.

In the morning Maia makes coffee and pours it into small, patterned cups that look like they belong to someone older. I haven’t slept much, and all my dreams were restless, full of snow; and I know what today is, and I have to make it up to Lia. I’d rather stay here, listen to Maia talk, curl up with her in the sunlight, but it’s only a passing daydream: she’s leaving soon, and she knows nothing of the snow.

She hovers in the doorway, watching me get ready. “I can come with you,” she offers, but I shake my head. I tell her this is something I must do with my sister. Today of all days, I can’t put it off any longer.

Maia lends me a black scarf that smells like her. I bury my face in it as I walk out into the grey morning. On the subway I place my purse on my lap and look at the leather notebook I’ve tucked inside.

There are a few pages left that I haven’t read.

I figure Lia and I can read them together.

Lia

Today, on the anniversary of their death, I dress as though for a funeral: black dress, black gloves, black coat. Looking out into the snowless grey, concrete and sky blending together, all colour washed away in a watery haze, I try not to think about Zoe. And when I do, I try not to think about the diary. How our mother knew about the City, how I was never really alone.

I should never have been alone.

The first time it happened, I was eleven. We’d just moved into our grandmother’s house and it still felt like a long holiday, sleeping in the guest room by the wood-burning stove, while Zoe slept in a cot in our grandmother’s bedroom. The walls were thin; it woke me when she cried in the night, and I curled up under two woolen blankets, half-dreaming that our parents had come to get us. One night the snow began to fall, and I opened the window above my bed to look outside. That was when the snow rushed in, spinning softly and melting into my skin, the air suddenly sharp and awake and waiting. And I climbed over the windowsill and went outside.

I never afterwards went into the City like I did that first time, consciously and with eyes wide open. Step after step I pushed through the snow, and the City materialized in front of me as though I were calling it up myself: first the bridge arcing over the river, then our apartment building tucked away on a side street lined with maple trees. Afterwards I could never find it again. The street shone pale and eerie, every window frosted with ice, but I did not doubt for a second where I was. I stood in front of the building, looked up at the second-floor windows with the shadows of clay pots lined up behind them. And there they were, our parents, thin shadows behind the glass. I thought I saw them wave.

The City turned me out after that. I stumbled up the steps to our grandmother’s house, clung to the walls to stay upright. And I didn’t dream of our parents that night, nor any other night after that.

Now I step out into the cold, and I’m alone, like every dark and long and lonely winter. But this city slips under my skin while I walk, fills the emptiness with its own music, the jackdaws cawing, the creaking streetcars, the side streets echoing with voices. I walk faster, tilt my head up. Breathe in the sharp morning air.

And when I turn through the iron gates and follow the trail between uneven rows of headstones and crosses, past the mausoleum and a mournful cluster of willows, I see someone standing in the distance.

Zoe’s here.

Zoe

These are their graves: twin headstones with white crosses on each side; two black-and-white photos in oval frames. These photos are how I know them. They stand for memory in my mind, along with a few others our grandmother kept in an old album.

“They’re younger than me in those,” says Lia.

I place the white chrysanthemums I brought in the granite vase between the headstones. Behind them rise endless rows of white crosses, recently repainted by the city after a public uproar over their state of neglect.

Lia bends down to light the candles. A cold wind ruffles her hair and slips under my scarf.

“Here.” I open my purse and hand her the notebook.

She opens it gingerly, like it’s about to crumble to dust in her hands. We put our heads close together and read.

June 10, 1989

I haven’t written for a year; with a baby, there’s barely any time. We’re in love, Lia’s in love, our lives revolve around this tiny creature. Our fears and hopes have doubled overnight. With babies you’re always afraid of things, afraid of them falling or getting sick or being in pain. Afraid our choices will come to hurt them someday. Hopeful that our choices will help them someday.

We haven’t crossed over in a long time now, but I figured I should write down how I do it, just in case.

When I need to find my way There, I close my eyes and think of snow. Hold out my hand, let my skin run cold and colder, until a crystal forms between the folds of my palm, sprouts tiny dendrites that remind me oddly of spring flowers.

It took me a while to understand that anyone can do it. We’ve all lost someone, we’ve all got someone There. Winter is our friend, our companion, after a certain age we carry it inside, it’s never really spring or summer ever again. To the warm simple summers of youth we look with indulgence, even with a little disdain.

But we protect our daughters’ summers, their long sunny days. One day, my darlings, my lark and my sparrow, one day you’ll find your way into Winter.

I only hope that day doesn’t come soon.

Lia

Zoe’s eyes reflect my own uncertainty, but there’s no time to talk about it. The first snowflakes have begun to fall, melting into the pages, hovering in the space between us, and suddenly Zoe has receded into the distance; I can barely make out her shape.

The snow pulls me as strongly as ever, but this time I keep my eyes open and fight. “Zoe,” I call, and I sway on my feet, caught between here and There, but the snowfall grows stronger, grips me and lifts me and carries me away.

Then I crumble on a glittering road, and the City expands all around me.

I stagger to my feet, into the white, the snow falling uniformly, no trace of wind in the air. The bridge lies straight ahead and I walk across it, a claw twisting in my chest, I’m close, so close. I pass someone familiar and turn to look: it’s our downstairs neighbour, smiling, smoking, walking with a younger woman. Her sister, I recognize her from the picture. They wave and I wave back, and then I turn away and walk on between white high-rises, past the thicket of yews, turn right where the maples begin, snow-laden and still as stone, and everything’s unchanged, it’s like I never left.

Zoe

When the snow begins I don’t hesitate. I run after her. She’s too fast; she drifts away between the headstones, and I nearly lose her. The snow lashes at me and I run into it. It doesn’t take any thinking; it’s like something inside me has been frozen for years, and now the thaw has come.

I can’t see Lia anymore, but I keep going. My face numb with cold, my eyes half-closed against the wind. All I see are white smears rushing at me from some invisible origin, and that’s where I’m going. Faster and faster I run, and my steps grow lighter, until everything changes all at once.

A glow over everything. The snow suddenly calm, the windless air.

Around me rises a City all in white.

Lia

My sister comes out of nowhere, hair flecked with snow and cheeks all red, and drifts toward me in that graceful way of the City. She puts her arm around me, steadies me. Looks up at our apartment building. “Where are we?”

“Don’t you know it? This is where we used to live.”

“You mean, before…?”

It’s hard to see through the heavy snowfall. I squint, but all I see are fronds of ice curling across the windows.

“I’ve seen them in there before. Through the windows.”

“Tell me,” says Zoe, leaning close. “Tell me about those days, the days before.”

Zoe

I give her time. I’ve never really asked her this before. By the time I began to understand what had happened to our parents, my sister was about to leave for college, and the gap between our ages seemed hopelessly wide.

Besides, I’d never known that line between before and after, never had to cross it like my sister had. At school, there was sometimes a pang of pain in history classes. Be grateful to those who gave their lives so you could live differently, the textbooks implied half-heartedly, and my classmates, all raised in the after-times like me, scoffed: as though we really live differently; as though things are really any better. And I resented it all, the gratitude and the scoffing.

Still leaning on my arm, Lia talks about the day the unrest started: the radio turned up to full volume, the strange mood in the house, our parents leaving to join the growing crowd. “We have to show up,” my mother said at the door, when our grandmother tried to stop them. “How will anything change if nobody does?”

We talk about the days that followed. The senseless bloodshed, the bombastic speeches on TV, the mourning and the celebrations, and our parents still missing, and finally the day they were found and returned to us, a day Lia can’t talk about and I can’t think about, even though we commemorate it every year. By now we’ve grown quiet. Lia’s eyes are closed and her face has that sickly after-snow shimmer. “We should get out of here,” I tell her.

She shakes her head weakly. “Have to wait for the snow to stop.”

“No. We can leave whenever we want to.”

Lia

I don’t believe Zoe because she doesn’t know about the City and I’m not even sure how she made it here; but her face gets this focused expression, and she steadies me so I can walk by her side, and as we slowly move down the street, it all begins to fade, the snow-covered maples and the white buildings and the windows gleaming with ice.

Suddenly it’s a dim afternoon in the cemetery and an uncertain snowfall hangs over the graves.

We sit on a chipped wooden bench and I rest my head on Zoe’s shoulder. Sunlight begins to slant through a break in the clouds.

“How did you do that?”

“It’s like mother wrote, anyone can do it. Don’t you see? We carry it inside us.”

“I don’t—”

“How did you find the City? The first time?”

I hesitate. “It was snowing and I opened a window. Climbed over the sill.”

“You went there by choice.” Zoe’s eyes are shining, it’s hard not to believe her. “Give me your hand.”

Zoe

I take Lia’s hand and place it in mine, palm facing up. I close my eyes and think. Call up the frozen part of me, that bitter shard I’ve hidden inside all my life. I think of snow. I think of snow and blood. Think of the past in black-and-white pictures. I make my skin run cold, cold, cold. Lia’s palm like ice in my hand—

Lia

—so cold it hurts, and something takes shape in the folds of my palm, a crystal, six dendrites reaching out, their tips exploding into six more, and then again until they’re too small to tell apart. Sunlight strikes the heart of the crystal, makes it gleam like a jewel, and all around us, the City begins to form.

Zoe

And once again we’re outside the city, inside the City; though we’re lucky not to be fleeing danger or looking for a place to hide, only remembering. We stand outside our old apartment building and look up.

Lia

I squeeze Zoe’s hand. Behind the second-floor apartment windows, I can see—

Zoe

—two shadows moving.

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