For months we played the same roles, traveling through Eastern Europe as the only female Incola searching for the right Incola family with which to align. I infected as much of the world as possible all the while searching for Dawn.

Our daughter was quite insane. Each ride Sally went on, it grew more and more difficult for her to find her way back. It was as if, though Dawn had lost her grip on reality, her grip on the thought world had tightened. On the last ride I allowed, Sally saw something that shook us to the core. For the first time I was truly frightened of our daughter. Not just for her but of her.

Sally, after hours of wandering in the memories that managed to grip tight to the peripherals around the tumor, found herself in the tenebrae. The devices of torture were gone. My son and two husbands remained. They were empty, unable to speak more than a few words in a row. Dawn was cannibalizing them, harvesting and consuming parts of them, their emotions, their memories, hoping to replace what she lost.

Ambrose had it the worst. Perhaps she thought being siblings might make the connection closer and more likely that his memories might heal her. She had allowed him to return to his childlike form and away from the monstrous one she saw him as. The left side of his body was gone; the right side pecked at, mangled but bloodlessly. His head suffered the same fate. It looked as if a massive melon baller had scooped it and the skin had grown over the wound. His single remaining eye did not look at me but straight through me without recognition.

Archelaos/Julian and Leon were in the same state but more whole. Their bodies looked like Swiss cheese. Some places showed light from the other side. Again, there was no gore, no blood, as if they had been born this way.

His spine missing, Archelaos lay on the ground, completely paralyzed. I hoped he could feel nothing but knew that was too much to hope for when Sally looked. His mouth was gone. No lips, no opening, just a smooth expanse of loose skin, because his jaw and teeth had been taken too. The nostrils of his nose were closed and smooth as well but he breathed through the bridge. The hole there showed us the cartilage and bone, where we could hear the passage of air. Tears streamed down his face and fell into a deep depression in his cheek. He felt everything.

Leon sat in his chair but the closer Sally moved the worse he looked. His right ankle was crossed over his left knee and his arms crossed over his chest. Except they weren’t. His right foot grew out of his left knee and his arms through his chest. He looked as if he’d been posed and then melted into himself. He could not move much and when Sally went to him, he spoke two words.

“Kill her.”

 

Sally came back to us nearly as insane as Dawn. She refused to accept the truth. Dawn was unredeemable. The end of the suffering of those three men could only be achieved by Dawn’s death. My others had varying opinions. I cared not. I knew what had to be done. Leon spoke true. Dawn must be stopped.

My ability to hold the front on my own improved with determination and focus. Sally was not allowed to leave anymore. We relied on more traditional means to find and follow Dawn. It took longer but I would not risk Sally again. I could not.

Here in Europe, contrary to the Americas, the population was consolidated, too dense to escape the illness. It was not necessary to visit every single location. Carriers would take the blight from town to town, household to household. In a small city, in a cold country before we reached Eastern Europe, I went to the theater so that we might expose an isolated Incola family that only came out to see actors. On that stage I saw a familiar face behind a mask.

Satisfied that the exposure had been enough, I dashed backstage and tore the tragedy mask from Paetus. Careful not to touch my skin, he led me into a dressing area. I stood next to a clothing rack filled with hanging costumes which stank of stale sweat and greasepaint makeup. He shrugged and said, “There is nothing quite like a Roman play.”

Confused, I asked, “But isn’t this a Greek tragedy?”

He smiled and for a moment I could see how handsome he probably was in his youth. “It is. As I said, there is nothing quite like a Roman play.” He looked as he always had and I remembered that this Roman body was not his and had been stolen.

“Did you think we wouldn’t find you?”

“On the contrary, it is why I took up with this troop.” He untied a small sack, more like a large coin purse, hanging from his belt and placed it in my hands. He said, “Once my mission in the Americas was completed, I targeted the most secretive Incola family by joining their favorite entertainment. Then, when I heard you approached, I pressured the troop to move in the same direction.” He untied and unbuttoned his coat, vest, and shirt and removed them all as one piece. He hung his costume with the others on the rack.

“What was your mission in the Americas?” I asked. He gestured to the bag in my hands. I pulled the drawstring closure and opened the bag to find it empty save fine gray ash at the bottom. I looked at him questioningly.

Bare chested, he sat at a vanity to remove his stage makeup with a rag and a jar of petroleum jelly. His back was a mass of scar tissue but, as I had placed many of those scars there, this was not shocking. Looking at me in the mirror, he explained, “That purse you hold carries an ounce of ash from every Carrier who abandoned you.” He smiled at me, clearly proud of himself. “I hunted, killed, and burned every last one of them.” Resuming his face wiping, he continued talking. The energy increased as he ranted, “Worthless traitors, the lot of them. Carriers without loyalty should not, nay, shall not be allowed to live. They either live to serve or they die. How could they think they would be allowed to live forever, completely free of service to Incola! Incola should never have taught them to heal themselves! If I cannot jump bodies, cannot ride, then living forever is all that sets me apart from the common riffraff! No Carrier will ever be allowed to live forever! No Carrier will ever be allowed to live without an Incola master!”

I took the sack and put it in a pocket of my gown. At that moment I was angry at Paetus. He had killed and would continue to kill innocent Carriers. Later, I would completely change my mind. There is no such thing as an innocent immortal.

My men went ahead, scouting both Dawn’s location and Incola that must be infected. In Russia, everyone learned what the state of her three prisoners told us. She had been taken by madness and must be stopped by whatever means. At this time, the Tsar and his family were still alive, as was the extreme segregation of wealth from the masses. Over eighty percent of the population were peasants. These people lived in small communes and few were literate or traveled much beyond their own village. This isolation meant that there was significant diversity of ethnicity, language, and culture. It was intensely patriarchal.

These factors led to more difficulty for me. Each group was different and I did not know all the languages or dialects. Even if I did, many men would not speak with me, as a woman, and many forbade any woman from visiting with me. I became frustrated quickly that I had to leave the detective work to my men while I waited silently. I did enjoy quite a bit of vodka.

In the more isolated areas of Siberia, the most inhospitable place for human habitation, and especially down into Mongolia, I found much more warmth and welcome. I drank vodka and fermented milk with wizened women and mustachioed men. We laughed at the same silly drunken behavior even without a fully understood language between us. At one of these late evenings, we heard of a rumor of a young woman who had taken over a nearby village with violence and madness.

As soon as I heard them speak of it, I could sense Dawn’s touch. I could smell her proximity. I also could sense that as soon as I knew she was close, she knew my location. She got further from me with every second but I could not give chase. To say it was cold out would be a vast understatement of the devastating weather. Locals seemed unconcerned but did not advise leaving at the moment.

We left at first light and were all glad we’d skipped breakfast. The three round dwellings stood on a plain surrounded by mountains. It was a small area and we did not see it until we were almost on top of it. Here the cold was dry. Hardly any snow fell, in direct contradiction to snowfall in Russia. The thin layer of snow surrounding the village was no longer white but stained red.

I saw the children first. A child, fully dressed in traditional garb, lay perpendicular to each side of the door, their bodies forming a border for the path to the entrance. Each one had been laid carefully and purposefully. Every one had their throats cut. Other than that aspect, they appeared peaceful compared to what we found inside each home.

The first we entered appeared to be a slaughterhouse of sorts. Headless bodies piled to one side. A short table had been converted to a chopping block, I assumed because of the gouges in the red-stained wood. Some of the bodies had a limb missing.

The second yurt had been used as a cooking tent. The stove fire was out but still had a cast iron frying pan atop it. “How did they get scrambled eggs? I’ve seen no sign of chickens.”

Paetus held up a blanket corner. “I’ve found the heads but they’re all missing their brains.”

I spun my head back around to look into the pan more closely.

Brains.

Human brains.

Your daughter is eating folks’ brains, said Marge.

She spoke internally. Sally shook our head, saying, “No, no,” repeatedly.

Emotions overwhelmed me. I would say the world started spinning but it was I who was spinning. I feared for Dawn; Mary Martha rose. I feared her, feared what she had become; Dierdre flew. I feared what I would now be forced to do but also felt freed that the decision was already made for me; Jo and Marge soared. Effie remembered what Dawn had done to our husbands and Ruth reminded me that if I had done something about it then, these people would be alive. Sally reflected them all back to me, amplifying them.

What did she hope to accomplish?

You mean, why did she do this?

The real question is how could she do this?

We are not innocent. What would we not try if we were as broken as she?

Who says we aren’t?

This feels the same as in her tenebrae. She was hoping to regain what she’s lost by consuming some part of another.

She is broken, completely insane.

No one is beyond redemption. We must try.

Taking time to try and save her gives Dawn more time to commit these kinds of atrocities again.

She won’t do this again. Whatever she attempted either worked and she won’t need to or it did not work and there would be no point in trying it again.

The others discussed the situation. I did not know who said what because they were all me. They all reflected some part of my own feelings. My thoughts were reeling and so my others argued.

Then a thought occurred to me that I could not remember ever having before. I should have let Father take Dawn before she was developed. That abortion would have saved so many people, myself included. I dismissed the thought. It was but one step away from saying that everyone would be better off if I’d never been born and that just wasn’t a path I was prepared to travel. Dawn had her role to play, just as I did.

I watched as Paetus walked around examining the bodies. His face reflected not horror but pride in Dawn’s actions. He turned and I saw evidence that he felt excited and aroused. It was disgusting. Then I remembered how long he had lived. That body was increasingly numb. The longer he lived the more pain and gore he required to stimulate him. If there was no limit to how long he could live, there would be no limit to the heights his depravity would grow.

Feeling unstable but anxious to push forward, I went to the third yurt. I thought it could not get any worse. I was mistaken.

At first my mind had difficulty making sense of what my eyes saw. This room had been set up more along the lines of an operating room. Every horizontal surface of significant size held a body. A few of them showed a level of decay but most had frozen before decomposition began. The bodies here were not missing their heads or limbs. In fact, most of them had extra parts attached.

We moved through the room silently. If it had not been for that fact, I might not have heard it, heard her labored breath. The poor thing lay on a soiled bed with another corpse. At least, that is what I thought at first glance. Upon further study, I realized that the dead head lying on the pillow next to hers was attached to her neck. A second rattling breath told me that infection had taken hold.

“Ed,” I called. My whisper sounded like a shout in this silent place.

When Ed moved the blanket down to better view the situation, he exposed the junction between the decaying dead head and her infected, clammy dying body. There between the two lay a perfectly rosy-pink strip of flesh. I kept Ed from touching Dawn’s skin. The woman, on which my daughter experimented, woke. Her cloudy and yet bloodshot eyes shot open.

The arm closest to me reached out. Though it was attached where her arm would normally be, it could not have been hers. She was a young woman and the arm was thick. A man’s arm had been attached where hers had been removed. And yet it responded to her command just as hers would have, with a thought. The same type of healthy pink flesh connected the two.

This monstrosity with our daughter’s skin attaching both dead and living parts from other people looked at me. I expected her to plead with us to kill her or to kill Dawn for what she’d done. I expected tears of anger or groans of pain. What I got was more horrifying.

Contentment.

She was doing what Dawn wanted. She pleased the owner of the flesh that kept her together and so this real-life Frankenstein’s monster was satisfied to lay there and rot until she died.

Something happened then that had not happened that completely since my stint in West Freeman’s Asylum. The darkness came. I fell into the darkness that protected me from pain throughout my childhood. I floated in ignorant bliss while the world went on without me.

 

I floated to the top. The others were mercifully silent. Attempting to stretch my limbs revealed that I was bound. Since I had never met a binding I could not break, I pulled. When the metal shackles and chain did not break, I applied real pressure. Two loud cracks sounded as I broke my own bones. Pain meant that Sally came to my rescue and I again sank into the darkness.

 

I floated to the top. Again, the others were mercifully silent. Sally kept control of our limbs to prevent a repeat of the last time I awakened. I was still bound. My eyes were mine to control. I opened them and found myself aboard the Precious Lady.

Ed stood at the helm. I cleared my throat and he rushed over to unbind me. He explained that Sally had asked him to devise a means of binding an Incola and the metal of these manacles and chains were the result of his work. He apologized but also excused his own actions by reminding me that I had said Sally was to be treated the same as I. She was me and her instructions were my instructions.

I wondered if I ought to change that. We might butt heads in the near future over what to do about Dawn and I needed to know my men were my men and not hers. Ed took my train of thought off of those particular rails as he showed me the new kind of metal strong enough to hold even Incola.

My right arm, stronger than my left, had broken itself in two places during my struggles. I set to healing that damage as Ed talked about chemical composition and metallurgy. When he finished, I asked about the monstrous woman who had caused me such distress that Sally felt the need to take us over.

“We killed her,” he answered quickly. It was a mercy killing. “We burned the entire village and reduced every body to ash.” They had done just what I would have. We had to ensure that any remnant of Dawn’s power of touch was eradicated.

“How long was…” I searched for the right question and settled on, “Sally’s visit?”

Ed backed away from me and feigned interest in some reading on his instrument panel. “Ed, I need to know.”

He wrung his hands. “Sally said not to discuss her time with us.”

“Let me see if I understand this. I tell you that Sally is me and that you are to treat us equally, then Sally tells you not to treat me equal to her and you just jump to her command.”

“No, my lady. She just did not wish to upset you.”

I was happy to decide what I wanted to know for myself, so I asked him again, “How long was Sally’s visit?” He hesitated and so I pushed until he answered.

“It depends on if you count the time that Sally was gone.”

Sally had ignored my order not to and had ridden Dawn. If I was in the darkness and Sally rode, then “Who was in control while she was gone?”

“All of them. None of them. Sally left Mary Martha in charge but she could not hold control exclusively, thus the shackles.”

That concerned me. Mary Martha and Sally had become too close. It was the mother bond. Mary Martha was our fear for our children, our desire to protect them at all costs. That would not do, for when it came time to deal with Dawn, those two could not be strong enough to overwhelm my will.

Effie would be my choice, or maybe even Jo. Dierdre was too paranoid and anxiety ridden. Marge was unpredictable and Ruth a useless ball of guilt.

“Why not put me in my mews?” I asked.

“The Precious Lady will not fly with that great weight. Here aboard is the best place for you so the shackles were fashioned and used while Sally was away.”

“Anything useful about Dawn uncovered while I was out?”

“Quite a lot, actually.” He retrieved a leather-bound notebook from his workstation. He held it against his chest, protectively. “Sally worried that it might bring on another episode. Are you sure you wish to know?”

I felt much better now that some distance had been placed between me and the monstrosity that was created by the monster I had created. I felt safe hearing the details when not facing the real-life result of those details. I nodded.

Ed came to sit beside me and opened the book. It was a journal of some type, medical by the look of it. It was filled with sketches and descriptions of procedures. Ed told me that he had found this in the last yurt where I had passed out. Dawn had a doctor traveling with her now. He did what she wanted because he, like everyone her skin touched, was under her spell, but he did not know her motivations, did not know her goal. Dawn did not speak aloud.

The doctor did not know why she needed to consume brains. He did not know what the point of his experiments were or why the skin she donated to his operations adhered and healed the tissue below so thoroughly. For whatever reason, his new ward needed to know if body parts could be grafted on and eventually if a person’s head could live on another person. After the first success with an arm transplant, Dawn had him put her arm on another person. It worked. The arm functioned but for whatever reason, this was not enough. There was some outcome unknown to him that she desired. He wondered if the head had worked; was that her goal? Did she want to transplant her head onto the body of another? The way her own arm had reattached itself to her body, after his surgery to transplant it back was completed, was nothing short of a miracle.

“How is Dawn? Is she well?” I asked. “Do we know where she is?”

“We do. Physically, she is recovered.”

I was aware that mentally she was equivalent to a vase dropped on the cobblestone. Broken was too tame a word. Dawn was shattered. For all my experience within my own mind, I knew nothing of how to heal one.

“Where is she? Are we headed there now?”

“We are. This is another thing Sally asked us to keep from you.” He paused to allow me to decide for myself if I wanted to hear or if I wanted to trust Sally.

I said, “It will be fine. Please go ahead and tell me.”

“Lady Dawn is with Chinese royalty—a woman or organization, it is difficult to tell for certain—by the name of Xia.”

I went inside to the meadow to confront Sally. I do not know if Ed continued talking or if he knew I was preoccupied. I understand why you would keep riding Dawn, against my wishes, from me. I would have been angry. I am angry. But why must Xia be kept a secret from me? I asked her. I know of the Yellow Empress, mother of all China.

There is something strange between you. Like a moth to a flame, you are attracted to what I fear will kill us. Sally answered me internally but I and the others could hear her all the same.

As always, Sally knew me better than I knew myself. I needed to meet Xia. How had she lasted so long completely undetected by the most powerful Incola in the world?