As White as Snow Read online

  Sunlight caressed the surface of the Vltava, making the river shimmer and shine. It was a beautiful day to die.

  A stooped man walked quickly down the street, glancing around and over his shoulder so methodically it seemed as if no one and nothing could ever sneak up on him. He was crossing a small side street when a gray car sped around the corner out of nowhere. He had time to see the car, but not to get out of its way.

  Many thoughts and feelings raced through his head at once. It felt unfair that this was happening right now, just as he had finally found the courage to speak. He felt sorrow for everyone who would mourn for him.

  Afterward, eyewitnesses gave conflicting accounts. Some of them thought the car braked, some didn’t. In any case, it hit him in the ribs with such force that he arced several yards through the air before slamming down on the cobblestone street. The man’s skull slammed against the pavement and, within moments, a dark red pool of blood began forming under his head. The first Good Samaritan to reach him recognized that the man had died instantly.

  The gray car fled the scene and no one got the plate number. One person thought it didn’t even have a license plate. No one had any memory of the driver’s appearance or even whether it was a man or a woman.

  Lenka walked to the window and looked out on the same landscape she’d known for the past five years. The linden trees, whose leaves changed color and then fell with the autumn winds, with bare branches that frosted over in the winter, where buds swelled in the spring, erupting and growing into leaves. Now the trees were thinner than before. Just the day before, Jaro had cut them back with a chain saw. To Lenka, the pruned trees looked sadder than usual. The pile of branches beneath them was like a burial mound. Lenka looked at the iron fence that surrounded the yard like a dismal, spiky nightmare. Lost in thought, she stroked the window frame. The white paint was cracked and flaking. The windowpanes needed cleaning. The glowing summer sun revealed the dust and fingerprints. There was no point in cleaning them, though. Not anymore.

  Suddenly, the room felt too small. The landscape looked confined. Lenka wished she could see farther. The house’s familiar smell of musty decay and sweet incense felt suffocating, even though Lenka usually liked it. Usually, it made her feel safe.

  Lenka didn’t understand what could have happened. For five years, she’d been happier than she would have imagined possible. Even though she had mourned her mother and sometimes felt terribly lonely, she’d still been content. Lenka didn’t want anything else. She had received so much in her life. She’d received people who cared for her and gave her a home. She’d received a faith that was greater and stronger than she was. Lenka knew what reward awaited her.

  Lenka thought of her first fifteen years like a dream she’d woken up from. The awakening had been cruel and harrowing, but it had been all the more necessary for that. Before, Lenka had always imagined that life was nothing more than it seemed. Just simple, everyday things like going to school, watching television with her mom at night, daydreaming about friends, falling in love, boys who never gave her a second glance, traveling to New York City, dreams of working as a photographer or a teacher. Life had been shallow and dependent on material and worldly things. Lenka had been excessively concerned about whether she was beautiful. She had stared at her face in the mirror for hours on end, fretting over each and every flaw and using makeup to try to shape herself into something more desirable—even though she was so shy and quiet that no one would ever have noticed whether she had long, beguiling eyelashes or not.

  Lenka had been so insecure. She had been a sleepwalker, really. She hadn’t been able to see the divine light that shone through the world. Not until the White Family helped her see how small and insignificant all the worldliness surrounding them was compared to the Truth. That she was worthless without holiness and without the one true God. Lenka’s life, like the lives of everyone else on earth, was just a climbing of stairs. The true door to her real home would be opened later. So why mourn that the stairs were humble and sometimes hard to ascend when ultimately they didn’t mean anything compared to eternity?

  Yet now Lenka found herself thinking about everything Lumikki had said about her life in Finland. She thought of the aurora borealis and nights without night. She thought about swimming in a hole chopped in the ice. They sounded like such fascinating, peculiar things. Like something out of a storybook. For five years, Lenka had never dreamed of traveling. Yet now, like a thief in the night, came thoughts of boarding an airplane with Lumikki, flying far away to Finland, visiting a sauna, swimming in sparkling lake water, and smelling the scent of the birch trees Lumikki described so beautifully. Lumikki had awoken a desire in Lenka to use all of her senses to their fullest at least once in her life.

  What pointless, stupid thoughts.

  Lenka looked around at the room with its beds lining the walls. Three of them slept here. There was no rug on the wood floor. No paintings on the walls. No desk, no lamp, no chairs. Nothing superfluous. Nothing that could lead one’s thoughts down the wrong path. They didn’t need diversions. In the evenings, they could occupy themselves with prayer. If they weren’t too connected to the world, they could get closer to God.

  Lenka clasped her hands. These thoughts were wrong. She had started wanting something she should not want. She had to ask forgiveness.

  She had to pray for strength.

  Lenka couldn’t help noticing that it was almost three thirty. If she wanted to meet Lumikki at five in the garden at the fort, she would have to leave soon. Lenka would do right by not going. Theoretically, she was under house arrest because she had broken the rules by bringing Lumikki home without asking permission first. They told Lenka that no one could be allowed to enter so easily. First, the family had to determine whether Lumikki was someone they could trust. Even if she really was Lenka’s sister, that alone wasn’t enough.

  Lenka had asked whether the family doubted her story. They said it wasn’t about that. It was because members of the family had to protect each other and the holy communion they enjoyed. No one could break that. Lenka’s right ring finger gently massaged her left ring finger where for years she’d worn the ring she received from her mother on her fifteenth birthday. Mother had died just a few weeks later. Lenka had always touched the ring when she needed strength or comfort.

  But last week, Lenka had removed the ring. Adam had told her more directly than ever before how her mother had lost her faith and abandoned the family, so keeping the ring had felt like an act of treachery. Lenka had thrown the ring in the river. There it could sink just like Mother had sunk.

  Now she had to find strength and comfort somewhere else, from her faith and from God.

  Lenka’s prayer broke off when an anguished, tearful cry came from downstairs.

  “Jaro is dead!”

  Lenka’s clasped hands fell. Guilt flooded her as she ran down the stairs. What if God had seen her sinful, worldly dreams and punished her by showing her how easily death could come?

  Lumikki sat in the garden of the fort, gazing at the fountain that gushed shining droplets like gems. The drops danced for a moment in the air, but then inexorably fell back to the surface of the water. Lumikki wondered how it would look if the drops suddenly rose to the sky like tiny, shimmering balloons. And then floated away. She played with the thought of them flying all the way to Finland and raining, warm and gentle, on Blaze’s face.

  Blaze. She was thinking about him again. Was it the distance? Was it easier to allow herself to long for him when she was in another country? Did that make yearning more permissible?

  By all rights, Lumikki’s thoughts shouldn’t have had room for anything but this strange Lenka girl, her even stranger family, and the ultimate question of whether they were actually related. Did Lumikki’s father have a secret child in Prague? Her longing for Blaze didn’t comply with traditional logic though. It had its own plans, and Lumikki couldn’t do a thing about it.

  Lumikki looked out over the city below her
and suddenly felt a powerful sense of unfamiliarity and otherness. She didn’t belong here. She was just visiting. She was a tourist who would leave before the city could really start feeling familiar. She was never going to feel at home here.

  Where was Lumikki really at home?

  Not in Riihimäki with her mom and dad. Not in her apartment in Tampere either, at least not yet. She had nothing that bound her so firmly to any one place that it could actually feel like home.

  A hot wind caressed Lumikki’s hair, reminding her of how his hand had stroked it and how she’d wanted it never to stop. In Blaze’s arms, she had felt at home. In the warmth of his gaze, she had felt safe, alive, and whole. She could just be herself. She didn’t need to act or hide or edit parts out. She had been happy. She had felt loved.

  The wind brought a scent of flowers and trees and summer that was so intoxicating Lumikki had to sit down. The feeling of foreignness and homelessness started to wrap around her like twine. It started at her feet, binding them together and then continuing up to her hips, her waist, lashing her arms to her sides, coiling around her neck, smothering her mouth.

  What if she never felt at home again without Blaze?

  What if she was never able to love anyone again?

  What if she had lost the only person she could be truly happy with?

  An early morning in July. They had stayed up late talking and neither of them were tired. The sun rose. Its light fell into the bedroom of the cabin, gentle and protective, softened by the branches of the birch tree growing outside the window. They lay on the narrow bed face-to-face. Blaze looked at Lumikki closely, as was his way. The gaze was not critical. It was warm and full of love.

  “Truth or dare, Lumikki,” Blaze said.

  “Truth,” Lumikki replied.

  “How often do you think about how beautiful you are?”

  Lumikki thought this over.

  “Honestly? Never.”

  And it was true. She’d been told she was ugly so many times that she believed it was true. Back then, she’d thought that might be the reason for what happened. That she was so ugly her tormentors simply had no choice but to spit in her face and hit her all the time. Her appearance was so revolting to them that they couldn’t help themselves. Eventually, of course, Lumikki had realized that wasn’t true.

  Afterward, she began to think that she wasn’t ugly, just nondescript. And it didn’t really matter how she looked. She didn’t care if anyone thought she was beautiful. Until she met Blaze.

  “I was a little afraid of that,” Blaze said. “So now I’m going to tell you what is beautiful about you.”

  He said it so seriously and so formally that Lumikki started laughing.

  Blaze looked up and lightly stroked Lumikki’s hairline.

  “Your forehead. I look at your forehead and I can almost see all the brilliant thoughts running around behind it.”

  Blaze’s caressing finger continued on to Lumikki’s eyebrows.

  “Your eyebrows and eyes, together. You have perfectly shaped eyes. And your gaze is so intense that I almost couldn’t speak the first time I saw you.”

  Lumikki’s heart started pounding and her eyes welled with tears. Blaze’s words felt as much like a caress as his hand, finding places inside her to stroke and soothe.

  A touch on her cheek. As light as a feather.

  “The line of your jaw. Graceful yet strong.”

  A finger grazing her lips. Now the touch began radiating more widely, running through her whole body. Deep in her gut. And lower.

  “Your lips. You have the most beautiful lips I’ve ever seen. And softer than any I’ve ever kissed.”

  Lumikki wished that Blaze would kiss her right then, but he continued moving his finger along her neck to her collarbone.

  “Your neck is unbelievably beautiful. And the way your neck and shoulders meet. Your collarbones are like bird’s wings.”

  Lumikki’s breathing had already sped up. She was astonished by how perfectly the tenderness of his hand and her desire moved in sync. Just as Blaze’s words embarrassed her and moved her with wonder and gratitude, his touch filled her with a compulsive, almost animal need. She was beautiful to someone. Someone saw her completely differently than anyone had ever seen her before. It felt so good it hurt.

  Blaze’s hand continued downward. His breathing wasn’t steady anymore either as he whispered in Lumikki’s ear:

  “Your breasts . . .”

  After that, the words disappeared. Touching continued the tale.

  They had another game. It was called Treasure Map. Or actually, there were two versions: Emotional Treasure Map and Physical Treasure Map.

  In Emotional Treasure Map, the person in charge of the map wrote words on a piece of paper or drew a picture that had some central significance in their life. From the words and pictures, paths led to other words or pictures. The person following the map got to choose what paths they wanted to follow. The person drawing the map explained how the words or pictures were connected and what story they concealed.

  In this way, Lumikki and Blaze were able to reveal their histories to each other piece by piece. Their fears, their hopes, their dreams. The secrets they had never told anyone else. The wishes that were almost too gossamer to put into words.

  Emotional Treasure Map opened the vaults they’d always kept locked before. They gave each other the keys and said: Go ahead and open it. I trust you completely.

  Physical Treasure Map also required trust. In this one, the person in charge of the map drew a picture of their body and marked the places they wanted something done to. The map reader got to choose in what order they moved from place to place and how many times. After the choice of location, the person who drew the map got to say how they wanted that place touched, kissed, bitten, or maybe just looked at. The map reader had to follow the instructions in full.

  The treasure maps weren’t an end in themselves. They were a gentle game either player could interrupt at any time. They could toss the drawings and letters aside and concentrate on how one situation led to another, naturally and unforced.

  There had been a time when everything between Lumikki and Blaze had been right, good, and natural. Lumikki often had dreams about that time. Waking up always felt just as violent and wrong.

  Why did she have to wake up when the dream was so much better, so much truer?

  She had lied. She had told tales that could have been true, but weren’t. She had constructed her story carefully and wouldn’t get caught.

  Was lying so wrong after all? If the lie was more beautiful than the truth? If the lie gave the teller and the hearer more than the truth?

  The lie became a story, and the story became true.

  She didn’t regret doing it.

  She wanted to see this story through to the end, to the very last page. She would take the risk that the end might be cruel. Her end.

  Lumikki looked at the clock on her phone. It was five already and there was no sign of Lenka. She very well might not be coming. The phone felt heavy in Lumikki’s hand, like it was urging her to call her father, to ask him directly. Lumikki was actually considering it. It would have to be a sneak attack. First, she would just chat with him about the weather and whatever else, and then go at him, hit him from behind by asking whether it was true he had a daughter in Prague. She would be able to tell instantly from his voice if he was lying. Or at least Lumikki assumed she would. Maybe her father was a better liar than she’d ever imagined.

  If Lenka was her father’s daughter and if everything Lenka said was true, Lumikki knew much less about her father than she thought. But did children ever know their parents? Really, deep down inside? Usually, they only saw a piece, just a small fraction. They didn’t know what their parents had been like as children or what they dreamed about as teenagers. And even if the parents talked about those things, the stories were always colored by the simple fact that parents were telling them to their children.

  Besides, Lumikki
’s family had never talked about anything like that. It just wasn’t their way. Sometimes, Lumikki felt as if she had spent the first sixteen years of her life living with strangers—acquaintances at best.

  It was five past five now. Lumikki stood up from the white wooden bench and stretched her legs a bit. She had walked a lot today. She liked walking, since it allowed her to get a sense of the city better than she could by tram, bus, or metro. Lumikki wondered whether she should leave. Her stomach was starting to grumble.

  She weighed the phone in her hand. Maybe it was high time to crack their glass wall of silence. Her dad’s number was under P for “Pappa.” Lumikki pressed the button before she could change her mind.

  Someone picked up on the first ring. But it wasn’t Dad, it was Mom.

  “Peter went out for a walk and left his phone,” her mother said. “Did you have something urgent to talk to him about? I’ll tell him to call as soon as he gets back.”

  Lumikki felt a headache coming on the instant she heard the concern in her mother’s voice.

  “No, I . . . I just couldn’t remember when it was that Pappa was here in Prague,” she said quickly.

  The other side of the line went quiet for a few seconds. Now, of course, her mother was going to claim that he’d never even been to Prague. That was the only logical answer, considering her dad had never breathed a word about the city, not the whole time Lumikki was planning her trip.

  “Have the two of you talked about that? I would have thought Peter . . . that he wouldn’t want to remember that. It’s been so many years. Those were . . . bad times.”

  Her mother’s voice had changed. It was strange. Lumikki had never heard her mother like that. She sounded sad, but also honest and open. As if she’d forgotten for a moment who she was talking to and wanted to say much more. Her mother’s defenses were much lower than usual. Lumikki had asked the right question.

  “Did something happen here?” Lumikki asked, launching another direct question immediately after the first.