Having discovered my near obsession with mahjong after leaving New York, I was eager to play in New York City’s Chinatown. I made sure my men had money to enjoy all the area had to offer and they gave me a wide berth while still ensuring my safety. Most had been with me long enough to know I felt comfortable around unsavory parts of society. I had no problem with the gamblers, amusement caterers, and prostitutes. I found them no more in number in Chinatown than in other parts of the bustling city.

As always the celestials welcomed me readily. I wanted to drink and play the tiles but would not have been able to find a table or open seat without guidance. This area of the city was a labyrinth. People lived on top of each other and businesses filled every alley and nook. My guide finally showed me to my seat where the three other players were much closer to my own age than I was accustomed. They were all men, even the servers and proprietor. I had missed the die throw and took my seat in last place, or North position. I put my money on the table so that they could see that I was serious about playing.

They learned how serious I was when I won all four hands of round one and an extra hand had to be played. After that, it was more evenly matched but I still came out on top. In the fourth round, I won from the wall and doubled my points. The men relaxed after that and began to play in earnest. If I could win that stoutly, I was no outsider. I did not take my winnings for the first game, but rather gave it back to them so that they might all afford to keep playing.

My others contained themselves as long as they could. After the third round a young woman brought the man in the West position beside me a bowl of food. I would never have thought it would make such a commotion, but it certainly did. Every other tried to jump to the front at the same time.

Effie commented about the sweet but yet savory smell of the dish, while Jo wished to know what the strange sticks he used to eat were called. Sally commented that the woman was quite attractive, while Mary Martha determined that the man she served must be the woman’s brother and not husband because the familial similarities were so obvious. Marge latched on to the woman’s impossibly small feet, commenting that they weren’t much longer than her own. Ignoring the fact that Marge’s feet weren’t real and didn’t exist in the real world, I fussed at her callous comment. The woman’s feet were clearly bound. I told Marge that binding was a painful process by which the toes were folded under the foot until they and the arch of the foot were broken. This was pain for a male ideal of beauty’s sake and I could not support such a thing. I hoped that the tradition would soon fall out of fashion for I would hate to see another generation of girls denied the joys of running and dancing.

I turned my attention back to the game and shuffled the tiles as it was my turn to deal. Soon I realized that the clinking, tinkling sound of my tiles tapping each other was the only sound of the room. Every head in the place was turned my direction. All talk and play had stopped. The only movement was the tufts and waves of smoke from abandoned and forgotten pipes and cigars. In the distance, the end of rain rolled from roofs and splashed into puddles on the cobblestone streets outside.

Going back to shuffling, I tried to figure out just what had happened. Perhaps I took too long with my internal conversation. Perhaps your conversation was not internal, Sally told me. I dealt and tried to look less panicked than I felt. This wouldn’t be the first time I’d had a conversation with an other out loud but it would definitely be the first time I’d had one with five others. I managed to get through the round but didn’t manage to win a single hand. The players finished our game but then left without tallying or collecting their winnings. Everyone else had already made their exits.

As I wove around tables and made my way to the exit, a small girl with dark hair brought me a bowl of the same food the woman had brought the player. I took the bowl and the girl showed me how to use the chopsticks. When I failed, she ran off laughing, her bare feet slapping the floor. The Chinese woman with the bound feet returned and gestured that I should eat the meat and rice with my hands.

Taking a small piece of what looked like duck, I intended to be polite. Once it was in my mouth and the flavors hit my tongue, I was anything but and began to shovel it, all the while making pleasure noises. The meat was tender and moist, rich with fat. Whatever sauce it had been cooked in permeated every part and was unlike anything I’d ever tasted before. Some spices I recognized; some I did not. Some were used in completely new ways. I felt the gentle touch of each of the others and they took turns up front with me so that they could experience the seemingly simple food with exotic flavor.

I complimented her and she nodded her thanks. She understood me but couldn’t speak English and I likewise could understand some of what she said. She spoke a different dialect than those I’d played mahjong with along the railways. What I understood was this: Because she was the first daughter, she had her feet bound when she was young to make her marriageable. Her younger sisters had been expected to work in the fields and at other jobs where bound feet would be too much of a hindrance. It had worked and she had made a good match. She was wealthy enough to bring her brother over from China. I was correct; the binding was very painful. But she defended her cultural practice by pointing out that we wore corsets that often kept us from activity and even sometimes broke ribs. All in the name of a male ideal of beauty.

This clarity of thought startled me. I had never considered it that way. Just as I felt comfortable with what I had always known, so was she. I wore my corset and she kept her feet bound. Those things made us feel beautiful and therefore powerful. We did not see them as oppression.

She stood to go and the little girl came running back in to take away the bowl. Smiling after her, she said that her daughters would never have their feet bound. It was no longer necessary. Most Chinese here were men and her daughters would have their pick of the finest husbands, even without lotus feet.

Then I thought of Dawn. How she had wanted to dress more adult for her big birthday party! I had said no. Now I considered why. Mary Martha said I was right to question myself; I had been thinking of impropriety, about how the males in her life would interpret such dress. Jo said she would never wear a corset. Effie silently admired how she looked in hers. Marge and Sally were deep in conversation about if the tiny woman bound her feet inside, would it have any effect on my feet out in the world.

The woman stared at me. Sympathy radiated from her black eyes. “How many death you carry inside?” she asked in heavily accented English. I felt my brow furrow. She asked again in her native tongue but my ability to understand was not much better than hers to speak my language.

“Both of my husbands’ deaths weigh heavily on me,” I stated.

She shook her head. “No. Not husbands. They not family.”

We stood in silence for a moment. Then I decided to try something. “Who is Xia?” I asked her.

The name seemed to resonate around the room. There was a clatter from the direction of the kitchen and then a man barked orders and probably the name of the woman I talked to. Before she left I slipped a bag of coin into her hands. I would say she rushed off but there was nothing quick about the way a woman with bound feet walked. Steps were small and delicate. I could not imagine trying to balance on such tiny things. I hoped I had not gotten the woman in trouble.

Outside my men waited on me with a carriage. I wanted to spend more time exploring the Xia character and why that name seemed to elicit such an extreme response. But night had fallen in earnest and New York was still a strange city to me. Paetus argued that though I had neutralized the Incola, they were still men and might seek revenge for what was taken from them. In the carriage, I studied him from below half-closed lids. Was that how he felt? I felt I had a good understanding of Paetus when Julian lived, and even after, but his behavior had been erratic since his illness.

When we returned to my rented home, a package waited for me. The butler said that a young celestial with a shaved head, save a long-braided tail, brought it and a small note. He was clearly not a fan of the Chinese immigrants.

Understanding a language spoken and being able to read this completely alien pictograph-like alphabet were very different talents. The first, I possessed. The second, I did not. I needed an interpreter. As it turned out the butler knew that a neighbor kept a Chinaman as a servant because he frequently did business with Chinese exporters, importing goods to the United States. Paetus went to inquire after borrowing the servant’s services and returned quickly. The importer had been suspicious at first, clearly worried I was there to interfere with his business in some way but had readily agreed to let us borrow the translator once he heard I had acquired a historic text and had a mere academic interest.

I sent everyone out, save the Chinaman and we sat down at my desk. The letter stated only She Lives To Destroy. “Who lives to destroy?” I asked.

“No, you misunderstand,” he replied. It was written, not as a statement, but as a person’s title or name. Perhaps that is who the book was about.

The book had started its life as a scroll. Segments had been cut and made into pages. It told the tale of the Yellow Emperor, the first ruler of the Chinese empire, initiator of all Chinese culture, and the ancestor of all Chinese. It spoke of the Emperor’s many inventions and conquests. The Emperor, not known for destruction as the note suggested, taught tribesmen basic skills such as how to build shelters, tame wild animals, grow the Five Grains, invented the fundamental blocks of civilization like carts, boats, clothing, and agriculture, and is credited with inventions as advanced as the bow sling, astronomy, the calendar, math, and even the Chinese character writing system. The Yellow Emperor encountered a talking beast, Bai Ze, who taught the knowledge of all supernatural creatures. The Yellow Emperor achieved immortality and, when the time came to pass from this to the next, left only a cap and clothing.

When the Chinaman finished I could tell he was holding back and asked him about it. He said the Yellow Emperor was a well-known story, but this text was much older than any he knew about. His confusion was probably just a difference between ancient writing and modern characters. Chinese writing was not like Western. There were many ways to write any word and the subtle differences held meaning. The way the word Emperor was written in this text was different than he had seen. Had he not been familiar with the tale, he would have read it as the Yellow Empress, as the character had the female flourish.

“Makes perfect sense to me,” Mary Martha argued. “Of course the ancestor of all Chinese was a woman.”

“We are the source of life, not men,” Sally agreed.

Marge grumbled under her breath, knowing full well that we could all hear her. “Men! Taking our accomplishments and rewriting history for their own advancement since the beginning of time.”

“So the goddess was changed to a god. Who cares?” Jo asked, riding a unicorn in place. We met in our mental meadow to talk. It was easier than allowing them to each use my body. Also, I was becoming concerned that they were so easily coming to the front, sometimes without me even noticing.

“I think our main concern should be who sent this to us,” Effie said.

“And why?” I added. The book was old, older even than I originally suspected. It must have been of great value, both in monetary and cultural terms. “Why would a person entrust it to us?”

“Because they, whoever they are, know we will do something with it,” said Marge.

“Yes, but what?” I asked. We were getting no closer to answering any of our questions than we had been when the Chinaman left. I went back to the top and made a big show of going up to bed in front of the men. I knew their guard rotation and knew it would be easy to slip past them. The one thing we knew was that this book had come from a celestial. I had to go back to Chinatown; I would speak with the woman with lotus feet if I could.

I had no waiting woman to aid me in dressing and undressing so there was no one in my rooms to trick. Instead of dressing in my bedclothes, I put on my least adorned black dress. It was cut to my new specifications so my legs were free to move quickly if need be. It was a matte black and would absorb instead of reflect any light that hit it. Though it had darkened a little with age, my hair was still blond and would shine like a flame atop a black candle. There was nothing to do but cover it with the hood of a dark cloak. My skin was pale but I could not sacrifice my vision by wearing a veil.

I sat and waited.

Jo practically bounced with excitement. She had changed the meadow to a cityscape and turned out the lights so she could practice hoping from shadow to shadow in back alleys. Just in case something happened to me and she needed to take over and get us out of trouble.

“I’m the smallest and could more easily hide in the shadows,” Marge stated. “Shouldn’t I be the one to take over tonight if needed?”

Now that was an interesting question. Sally and I did have differing physical traits that could be detected by those closest to us. Would Marge be small if she took the helm? Neither she nor Jo had ever taken control. They didn’t really know how and we considered letting them try but decided against it.

The hours passed. I knew that the first shift was coming to an end. The guards would be their most distracted and tired. Now was my chance before fresh eyes and ears arrived. I made it outside, after almost being caught twice. I cursed the swish of my skirts, which sounded deafening to my own ears.

I did not wish to walk the whole way, so I took alleyways to a more populated late-night area and hailed a hansom cab. I had him take me to the outskirts of Chinatown. I needed to travel unencumbered and a bit more incognito than the attention a cab like this would get in a place where most were on foot. I had been places seedier than this at night, but never on my own.

I walked with my head down, keeping my face in shadow, all the while trying to look for danger in all directions. I didn’t know where we were going nor what we were looking for. Then I saw her. It was hard to tell Chinamen from Chinese women, so alike was their dress, but there was no mistaking the small delicately balanced steps of a woman with bound feet.

She was some distance ahead of me. She turned a corner and I hurried to catch up with her. I caught sight of her back as she turned yet another corner. I sped up my pace. I almost missed her as she turned into an open doorway. I went to follow her and was met by a middle-aged Chinaman. He stopped me and shook his head and hands back and forth saying, “No, no, no. Go back.” The door behind him clicked closed and I knew where she’d gone.

I argued as best I could. The strange smoke wafting from the closed door at his back told me this was an opium den, or joint as they called them at the time. Many Victorian ladies such as myself would rail against the immoral behavior in such a place and the owner feared I was there to make trouble by talking reform. I wasn’t interested in reform. Opium was used by women in my station quite often, though usually in a tincture to be ingested. As soon as I knew what this place had to offer, I was as interested in experiencing it for what it was intended as I was in finding the woman.

I gestured that I wanted to smoke and jingled my coin purse. His demeanor softened. He attempted to direct me to the door opposite the one she had gone through. “No,” I said and pointed.

“Better,” he said and went to the other door. When he opened it to show me the lavishness, I could see it was filled by the rich white upper class that probably made up my neighbors in the rented house. I dashed to the other door. I went through. The smoke here was thick. Some was tobacco and the rest was not. A white man stopped me. He was older. I knew instantly that he was the true owner of the establishment. Part of me was outraged. Men like him were getting rich while Chinese suffered under fear of the “Yellow Peril” disguised as an anti-drug campaign.

I punched him in the face.

I don’t know why; it just felt right.

I stepped over his unconscious form. This room was smaller, much less populated and less opulently decorated. The items decorating the walls felt more genuinely Chinese. I knew the few people indulging here were enjoying a rare luxury, rather than the addiction of the other, more white, room. I found the woman with lotus feet at the back of the room, lounging on a knee-high bamboo mat. She looked up at me with euphoric eyes and a smile. She tried to offer me her pipe but her arms worked as well as jelly.

“Join her?” asked the attendant.

Taking the pipe from her limp arm, I laid down beside her and handed it to the celestial that followed me. He filled it with new powdered opium and checked the gas lamp in front of us. It burned. He showed me how to hold the pipe above the ornate lamp.

I smoked.

Opium tends to nauseate, so a lot of vomiting was involved. I will skip that part. Euphoria. That is the only word to describe those first few seconds, vomit be damned. I floated, flying. Happiness and joy were all I knew. Calm. I was relaxed and happy. Pain was no more. The others fell asleep. I was alone for the first time in my life. My limbs were weightless.

I dreamed.

Climbing.

Climbing a hill.

Climbing a mountain, hands and feet.

Crawling up, up, up the mountain.

To my left crawled a golden Chinese dragon.

Her mountain matched my own. Each meter I climbed, a new meter appeared above me. The ground rose with every step. I watched her climb. The rocks beneath her feet tumbled down. The thuds were more fleshy than rocky. I continued to climb. Heads rolled. Tiny heads. The mountain was made of babies. The bones and bodies of children, baby humans and baby dragons.

I realized that no matter how fast I climbed, the mountain would grow to meet me. To go further, more babes would perish. I made a decision. I jumped from my own mountain to the dragon’s. Looking down I could see her mountain started so far below my own. She’d been climbing for ages. She would climb until the end of time. Reaching up, I grabbed her by the jaw. We fell. I tore off her head; it laughed at me the whole way down.

I smoked more. I had never felt so relaxed. No worries clouded my mind. Cool water flowed down my throat when I thirsted. Warm broth filled my belly when I hungered. I lay with the woman with bound feet. I traveled the world on wings of a dragon.

I woke to a fight around me. Reaching for a pipe and new light, I said, “Do not bicker.” I took a puff. Paetus picked me up, chuckling. I was liquid in his arms. People talked around me. I knew them but did not recognize them. I knew there was a carriage ride. I spoke highly of my hosts and left as much money as I could.

 

Steaming water poured over my head, washing away the soap and hopefully the body odor I had accumulated while chasing the dragon. Paetus and Ed updated me from the other side of the room. A folding screen kept my bath hidden and if the arrangement was shocking to the girl they’d brought in to assist me, she hid it just as well.

“Finding you was no mean feat,” said Ed. “The men all thought an Incola was involved, so we visited every major family in town. We did our best not to give away the fact that you were missing. Paetus used his gift so that we could get through them all in a timely manner.”

“We had a chat with the Oriental interpreter then,” Paetus interjected. “He knew nothing, just droned on and on about the book you’d had him read.”

“The note had no to nor from; only the words She Lives to Destroy. He told us it was a title.”

“Sound like anyone we know,? Paetus muttered under his breath.

I could hear the reproach in Ed’s voice. “Neither seemed to have any clues as to where you might have been taken.” I wondered if Ed’s mechanical eyes saw the cloth screen as solid or no encumbrance whatsoever. I sank down deeper into the warm water scented by floating rose petals until nothing below my chin lay above the waterline.

“I wasn’t taken,” I said.

“We had much more luck after we quit operating under the assumption that an Incola had absconded with you,” Paetus said. “We checked all of the gin joints and whore houses. Then we tried the mahjong parlors. Those places are well hidden. Threats did nothing to the Oriental.”

“Money talks in any language, but still none of them knew where you were. We watched the neighborhoods and caught a break when we followed a wealthy looking woman into an opium joint.”

“It seemed the perfect progression from alcohol and fallen women to gambling and opium. But none of the well-dressed women in that or any other joint we could find had seen you.”

“The problem was that at each establishment we asked where a wealthy peeress would partake. Each time they took us in the opposite direction as we needed. It wasn’t until we watched a celestial woman go in another entrance, that we realized there are two sides to every joint. We went back and searched the other side and found you.”

“It took us four days.”

Sally sat up at that statement. “Where is Dawn?” she asked them.

There was a pause, a moment of silence, as if neither wanted to answer. It must be bad news. In the end it was Paetus who spoke. “We’ve lost her.”

 

After dismissing the girl, Ed, and Paetus, I sat at the mirror in my bathing gown, allowing it to absorb the bath water while I combed out my long blond hair. It had always been a vanity of mine. Short hair was the sign of insanity, as no woman would ever voluntarily give up her locks.

As soon as the thought crossed my mind, Jo ran with it. She altered her appearance by severing hers right below the ear. She laughed, running to and fro in our meadow, enjoying the light and loose feeling. Jo had always despised brushing our hair. She complained every time of the feel of tearing knots and the sound of ripping strands.

We, the others and I, spoke about our opium experience. We had all come out with a revelation of sorts. We had only one body and mind so a drug of that type would affect us all. I hadn’t expected that they would each have a different experience.

Jo dreamed of power like she had in our mind, but more godlike. The power over others. She still never wished to be out in the world. The opium fog let a secret longing out. She wanted what Dawn had. Jo longed to rule over people here in our mind. She hoped to pull people in. Even as I had been repulsed by Dawn’s mental tenebrae, Jo had been drawn.

Effie dreamed of love, in general and specifically. Hers was one of being reunited with Julian, Leon, Robbie, even Theodore. My nephew was near her age; it did not seem strange that she would have an attraction to him. The feeling of seeing them again for the first time left her intoxicated. What exchange of lovely words would set her heart to flutter? How would her body react to the embrace of each? How would each feel pressed against her? She cut off her descriptions then, like any respectable Victorian lady.

Mary Martha dreamed of laughing children, protecting her family, savoring their innocence. She wished for something that she’d never had. She was homesick for a time and place that never existed. We had never been a happy, normal family. My children’s laughter was not a thing to seek but to fear.

Marge dreamed of space. She floated, weightless, watching the stars flicker and flash. She watched clusters and constellations float past. Galaxies collided and fought in the darkness and she just swam by, enjoying the light shows. They never knew that they danced for her, the center of everything.

And Sally. She thought only of being whole, of pulling us all and somehow corseting us together. It was more complicated than just us being one again. She wanted us all to have our own place, our own control as an individual but as part of a greater whole. What she had seen in her mind made no sense to me. She longed not for something that had not only never existed but that never could exist. How wrong I was. She had dreamed of their final fate, in an almost prophetic manner.

Now that the haze had lifted, I knew my dream had been one of Xia. She was the yellow dragon, the Yellow Empress. If I stayed on my path, desperately trying to keep up with her, people on both sides would be stepped on, crushed, and destroyed. I had to find her path and join it to gain access to her, in order to stop it all. It was too philosophical to be helpful in the physical world. I didn’t know who she was or where to find her or how to join her path and destroy her destiny.

Brushing my hair had become automatic while we met. Now that it was thoroughly untangled, I braided it for night to keep it from re-knotting itself during sleep. I knew I would not be able to sleep. Since hearing that Dawn was once again missing, I had been excited, wound up. Sally worried, but not I.

“Of course you’re excited, Ramillia,” Marge said. “It means more adventure.”

Mary Martha praised our daughter. “Dawn has given you what you always wanted.”

It was true that this had been a great adventure. I’d never been more free. So much of the world had been too dangerous for me before. The Incola were no danger to me, the living weapon, Lady Pestis. Dawn being kidnapped and now disappearing had given me the excuse I needed to travel the world. I could see every place, have every experience.

A knock at my door interrupted my thoughts. “A letter has come for you,” came a familiar voice from the other side.

“Bring it in, Auley. I am decent.”

While I was covered, I was far from what would be considered decent at the time. The door opened and he came through, careful to only open it wide enough for his entrance and not enough that any other might see inside. Even so, I stayed facing away and watched in the mirror as he deposited the letter on a bureau.

“Thank you,” I said as he made his exit.

The letter looked official and the letterhead told me it was from my family’s solicitor. The lawyer, whom I did not recognize, wrote to inform me that my father’s older sister, his only sibling, had passed away two weeks prior. She had no children of her own and had been preceded in death by her husband some years ago. I had never known her but may have met her on an occasion or two as a child. She had left everything to me. The law meant that fortunes passed from father to son so my father had gotten everything long ago. My aunt had little to leave. She had married for love but married well enough. Her husband used her dowry to buy them a small estate. An estate that would now be mine if only the state had not confiscated it. The lawyer had managed to keep a small chest of family memorabilia and would store it for me until such a time when I could retrieve it, if I should so desire to take the risk of reentering Britain.

“When did she die?” asked Marge.

I told them the date. Sally and Marge firmed in my mind. A thought had occurred to them both. “Why?” I asked as I met them in our meadow.

Effie and Mary Martha scrambled, trying to understand. “What date were you born, Marge?”

It had been the same as my aunt’s death. “Coincidence?” Marge asked.

I asked each of them when they had been born and discovered they all coincided with the death of a family member of mine. My mother had died in childbirth, my own. Sally had been here with me since birth. Jo had been born when father died. Effie, around the time Julian had walked my brother, Thaddeus, to the gallows. Mary Martha’s appearance could have been the result of my son’s, Ambrose, death. And now my aunt led to Marge.

These were my closest genetic relatives. Not just someone close to me, for no one had been born at the death of my father’s wife, whom I thought was my mother but was not. I remembered the woman with bound feet’s words, How many death you carry inside? No. Not husbands. They not family. Could she have known? Could she have been asking how many others I carried?

Everything clicked into place. Not only were my others’ births linked to the time of those deaths, but they each had a connection to the emotion I felt most strongly at the time. Jo was strong and free and in control. Effie was love, lust, and devotion to my husbands. Mary Martha was motherly rage and protection. Marge was small and insignificant but also the center of her universe.

Sally, born at my own birth, had told me when first we met that the pain was hers. She lived in the pain. There was nothing more jarring and painful than birth. This all might mean something else. I rushed to the top, away from the meadow where they could all hear my thoughts. Sally could always hear me and it was in her I confided.

I now knew how the others came to the front. I knew how they could escape. It was a secret I needed to keep from them as long as possible. Only Sally could help me do that.