Incarnate- Essence Page 3

  “Keep it,” I said, slamming the pipe down on the table before running out the door.

  “Sounds like you might need it more than me now, friend,” he called after me, but I ignored him.

  My pale gray Zhiduo fluttered behind me as I ran, the horse hair cap covering my shaved head beginning to slide off to the side. Already I could faintly smell burning wood. Over the thatched and bamboo roofs of the city I spotted pillars of smoke curling into the sky from the harbor.

  I followed after my companions, running down toward the wharf. Confused shouts rose up over the city, people walking out of the markets and bars to examine the commotion.

  My feet pumped over the stony road, carrying me closer. I dodged around a woman standing in my way, stumbling and catching my balance. Flames licked off masts rising over the thatched roofs, grasping toward the sky like corpse fingers. Arriving at the bottom of the hill, I stopped amongst my companions.

  Crowds had gathered from nearby, watching the spectacle. Stevedores hurried about in confusion as spear-wielding imperial soldiers blocked their way to the docks. Another boat full of soldiers was launching from the dock, heading toward one of the nearby ships as they lit new torches.

  Further out in the harbor I could see three of the larger nine-masted ships. Two of them were aflame, the other just beginning to catch fire. Many of the smaller ships near the docks were already sinking, flames sizzling as they went under the surf.

  “I had heard the rumors,” one of my companions said, “but I didn’t think it would actually happen.”

  “What are we supposed to do now?” another asked.

  “Two of the ships are still in Nanking, aren’t they?”

  “We wait for the next emperor,” I said quietly, “maybe he will rebuild.”

  It was always a possibility that another emperor would become interested in the world outside of China. It had happened before, although never to the extent that Zheng He’s voyages had reached. The distraction it provided for me had been interesting. Never before had I travelled so far to lands in which I had lived in past lives. Seeing those areas in India, Africa, Arabia, and Java all in one lifetime had been an astonishing experience.

  Seeing Hormuz after having lived in Persia only one lifetime ago was a treat. It was still how I remembered it, making concrete the idea of the world being connected. I had sailed before while living in Arabia and Europe, but never as far as I had in the Treasure Voyages. The ships being built elsewhere were improving, but none of them had come close to the baoshan.

  “The world will be a different place,” I said.

  “What was that?” one of my companions asked.

  “The Mohammedans,” I said, “it is only a matter of time before they can make it over here.”

  “Their ships are puny,” another said, “they’ll be swallowed up by the monsoons.”

  I shook my head, “the Hongxi Emperor may have just given the world to the Mohammedans. Or the Christians.”

  This proclamation was met with a derisive snort. “Those scurvy-ridden, shit-wallowing swine?”

  I grinned. “Perhaps not,” I said, watching another of the large ships light up in the distance, “but the world no longer belongs to the Ming Dynasty.”

  September, 1918 C.E.

  Tension infused the crowd around the Saransk railway station. Dark clouds blanketed the Russian steppe, darkening our rain-dampened platform. Chilly autumn winds fluttered through my thick sarafan like a ghostly hand beckoning me to flee the claustrophobic train station. Families stood with their belongings, waiting for the train to arrive from Penza.

  Idealistic men gathered, talking about what freedom meant to them and who was ruining it for everyone. Women attempted to find black market food after many of the local farms had their harvests confiscated by the Bolsheviks. A young priest draped in a black exorasson and topped with a matching skufia sermonized on the evils of Marxism ten meters away from a Ukrainian Jew in a newsboy cap handing out communist pamphlets. A gray-haired old beggar lifted a bottle of vodka to his mouth and drank deep. Three boys chased each other across the platform, weaving between the throngs.

  I stood amongst the crowd wearing the plainest travel ware I owned – a red and white sarafan with a matching shawl tied over my hair. The jewels hidden in the folds of my dress pressed against me as curious peasants walked past, a young, intoxicated man bumping into me. The small entourage of my husband Oleg Denisov stood in a loose circle around us on the platform, attempting to blend in as well as possible.

  “Miss Denisov,” my servant Maria whispered from a few steps away, the old woman’s voice barely audible over the din of the crowd, “I cannot get him to quit fussing.”

  My son Aleksei was held in the older woman’s arms, still weakly struggling against her. He was just over two years of age but was still unable to formulate even simple words. I glanced over to Maria, seeing my dangerously thin son putting a palm against the elderly woman’s face, trying to push her away as a cat might when it didn’t want to be held. Aleksei’s eyes were rolled up into the back of his head, only managing to utter moans of dissatisfaction.

  “Let me take him,” I whispered back.

  Maria handed the child to me, his shoes kicking at my stomach as I brought him closer.

  “Aleksei, please,” I whispered, hugging the boy close to my chest, “we have to stay quiet so they don’t find us.”

  The young boy seemed not to hear, still wriggling around in my arms, mouth agape. I bent over, bringing his feet down to the wooden platform and letting go, keeping his hand clasped in mine. He wavered and fell backward, looking back up to me in confusion. I pulled him up by his arm into a standing position. He reached his free hand out, grabbing onto a fold in my skirt for support, his head still rolling lazily back and forth, eyes unfocused.

  “He is getting worse,” Oleg said in a hushed voice, taking a step closer to me.

  “Yes,” I said, still looking down at the struggling boy.

  “We shall find a doctor for him once we arrive,” Oleg said with the air of finality he always used when he talked about our son.

  I gave him a weak smile. The distant whistle of the arriving train sounded, lending me some semblance of comfort.

  Our situation had been getting progressively dangerous since Nicholas II abdicated the previous March. Oleg’s family was new to the nobility class, his grandfather only obtaining noble status after the Crimean war. Oleg still had no official title, but he owned a plot of land near Nizhny Novgorod where his estate was located. He had been confident that the revolutionary sentiments would be appeased the way it had been following the 1905 turmoil, but after the summer’s harvest was confiscated this year and news of Nicholas II’s murder, he decided it was time to go.

  Oleg didn’t have a good idea of where to take us, but as usual he wore a stoic expression around me. The first forty-five years of this life had been fairly charming, being brought up in a wealthy, land-owning family in the Russian Empire and being married to a gentle, though somewhat reserved, minor nobleman. Both of us traveled a lot, allowing me to experience much of Russia west of the Ural Mountains like I hadn’t been able to in any past life.

  I played the demure noblewoman with Oleg. But when he was on business, there was nothing I liked better than indulging myself on a bottle of expensive imported Scotch and spending the night painting. This pastime had become even easier twenty years earlier after our first son died at the age of twelve, making Oleg become even more distant with me, although never aggressive. It was an open secret between us that he was carrying on at least two affairs with other women, but as long as he left me alone to do what I wanted, I never complained.

  After the Great War broke out, Oleg had been swept up in a renewed sense of Russian patriotism and insisted on me bearing him another heir. That resulted in Aleksei being born. My husband, feeling more patriotic than ever, named him after general Aleksei Brusilov, whose offensive against the Hapsburgs was still being effectively
prosecuted when our son was born.

  The train whistle grew louder, an oily black cloud from its engine appearing as the locomotive drew nearer. Voices grew louder in response, the rabble occupying the raised platform becoming impatient. I looked to Oleg again. He had shaved off his mustache just before leaving, his clean-shaven face something I couldn’t ever remember seeing before. His jaw was clenched tight, a single briefcase in his left hand, the right hovering near a loaded pistol I knew he had hidden in his trousers. Aleksei continued to fuss by my side, pulling on my hand in an aimless attempt to get us to go anywhere but where we were.

  “Maria,” I said, seeing my servant’s apprehensive look.

  “Yes, Miss Denisov?”

  “We’ll find your son,” I assured her, “Oleg knows people in Vladivostok. His brother is an admiral. He should know someone who can locate him.”

  The old woman forced a smile but said nothing. There was no calming the worries of a mother whose child’s whereabouts were unknown. Her son had become enamored with the Bolshevik philosophy and the last anyone had heard he was-

  Screams sounded across the platform as the train doors opened, men rushing out. Gunshots went off. I watched in horror as people near the tracks turned to run from the men piling out of the train. Cheka men.

  “Go!” Oleg shouted, grabbing my arm and pulling.

  I dragged Aleksei with my other arm, the child suddenly resisting movement now that we started. Shouts and screams rose all around us as the crowds herded like panicked cattle for the stairs. I looked back, seeing Cheka men grabbing people and throwing them down to the platform. One aimed his pistol at the back of a man’s neck, firing, blood squirting out in front of him. Another lifted a rifle, taking aim into the crowd and firing.

  Oleg had drawn his pistol, trying to use it to push his way through the panicked crowd toward the stairway. More gunshots went off behind us. I stumbled, looking down and seeing a young woman lying on the platform shielding her head with battered arms. I didn’t have time to react, my feet stomping over her as Oleg pulled me along. Aleksei tripped over the woman, falling down. I shouted, pulling my hand from Oleg’s, turning to pick the sickly boy up. I could hear Oleg shouting something, but couldn’t understand what he said.

  When I turned back around, my husband and his entourage were gone, pulled forward by the throngs. I brought Aleksei up, his arms wrapping around my neck, and continued on. More gunshots. Screams and pleas to God. People bumped into me from every direction.

  I ran perpendicular to the flow, moving to the edge of the platform. People thrashed past me, a gray-haired old man running into me. I fell to the side, my shoulder hitting the back of a woman and sending her sprawling to the wooden platform. I landed on top of the screaming woman, the crowds parting around us as they ran. I scrambled to my feet, lifting Aleksei, and ran from the woman toward the edge of the platform without looking back.

  I peered over the railing. Others were making the jump. A man threw his luggage over the side, one bag landing on a young woman below and sending her face first into the mud. The man leapt over the railing, hollering in pain when his ankle bent sideways upon landing in the thick slop. I looked back over my shoulder, the platform clearing fast as the Cheka men continued summarily executing people. I turned back to the railing, biting my lip.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered to Aleksei, sitting him up on the railing and then pushing.

  The small child went flailing down into the mud, almost hitting a young boy running away. I hoisted myself up onto the railing, swung my feet over the other side, and jumped. Air fluttered through my skirt as I fell the fifteen feet downward. Sharp pain jolted through my ankle as I landed, allowing myself to topple over. I scrambled to my hands and knees.

  “Aleksei!” I shouted, crawling around, caked in wet filth, searching for my son, “Aleksei!”

  I found him still lying down in the fresh muck, wailing. I put my hands under his armpits, trying to lift him. Panicked legs struck me in the side, the man tripping over me into the mud. I stifled a scream as I dropped Aleksei back to the wet earth. A wave of dizziness swirled past me, arms trembling. My entire body felt weighed down by the mud saturating my clothes. I took a deep breath, trying to calm my nerves and tune out the panicked shouts around me.

  I exhaled, grabbed my son, and struggled against the weight of the mud to lift myself back up. Sharp pain in my ankle bolted up my leg, sending me back to my knees. I grabbed Aleksei in one arm, crawling with my other toward the platform. Crawling for the small space beneath it, where I could already see frightened eyes staring out from mud caked faces.

  I pushed Aleksei under the platform and began slithering myself under. The others hiding there whispered and shushed as my son sobbed. I backed myself in, curling my body around the shivering boy.

  “Quiet him!” the woman next to me whispered.

  The gunshots above had ceased, but the screams and hollers of the fleeing masses still echoed across the station. Footsteps stamped over the wet platform above. Aleksei cried into my chest, his whimpers still audible. I squeezed him harder against me. A hush fell over the people hiding beneath the platform, making my son’s quiet moans seem that much louder. I pulled his frail body even tighter into myself, tighter until there was no sound.

  Cheka men stamped deliberately over the platform above. I could hear them talking, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. I squeezed my eyes shut, listening to panicked breathing from the people squeezed in around me. Aleksei struggled feebly against my constricting embrace.

  The footsteps finally stopped, but nobody dared move or talk. Only the hissing sound of the train’s coal burning and the whispering wind could be heard. We sat still for several minutes.

  And then someone screamed. I opened my eyes, looking to my right, seeing a group of the Cheka men pulling people out from under the platform. Several Cheka men laughed at the sight of mud-soaked kulaks.

  I started trying to slither my way out before the Cheka men got to me.

  “Aleksei,” I said, holding the boy away from me.

  His body was limp, eyes glazed over and rolled back into his skull, tongue hanging loosely from between purple lips. I gasped in horror, still trying to shake the boy, even though I knew…

  It was too late to run. The Cheka men were already pulling the woman out from next to me. I resigned myself to my fate as rough hands grabbed onto my arms, pulling me out into the mud.

  “Knees, kulak!” he barked, “get on your goddman knees!”

  Tears welled up in my eyes as I obeyed. The people around me sobbed and protested but found no mercy from the communist radicals. They were convinced of their own righteousness. The pain and death of a couple dozen bloodsuckers and counterrevolutionaries was a small price to pay to summon forth their utopia.

  A Chekist with a pistol walked to the end of the line of kneeling, sobbing people. He held the pistol to the back of the first man’s neck and fired, blood squirting out into the dirt as the man fell forward, giving one final shudder after landing in the mud. The Chekist took a step forward, holding his pistol up to the back of the next man’s neck and fired again.

  He continued down the line, getting closer to me. When he got to the woman next to me, she wailed in despair just before the deafening gunshot sent her sprawling forward. I closed my eyes, hearing the man’s boots squish into the mud behind me. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but I could just about feel the presence of a pistol only inches from my neck. I inhaled in anticipation, squeezing my eyes shut.

  The searing pain in my throat registered before the sound of the pistol firing. The world quickly faded as the muddy ground rushed toward me, the black silence of death devouring me before my face ever touched the wet, blood-reddened earth.

  Chapter 1

  Our car slowed to a stop. Lopsided shanties mottled the barren valley sprawling before us. Desert grasses and other abandoned vehicles littered the rocky hill overlooking the makeshift town. The vehicle’s
electric motor shut off, leaving only the buzzing of insects coming from all directions. Harsh sunlight cooked corrugated metal and rotting wooden structures scattered in crooked rows throughout the shallow valley below. People milled around like dazed ants before the massive barrier to the south.

  Stretching across the US-Mexico border in front of Langtry, Texas, a fortified concrete wall jutted up from the earth on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. Connected segments separated by square columns stood like malignant growths in the middle of the desert. Guard towers overlooked the dingy refugee holdings, only a few gates to be seen in the fortification. A profound fear stuck at the faint sound of an unmanned aerial vehicle passed overhead, keeping vigil over the US-Mexico border.

  “Doesn’t look like anything worth protecting on the other side of the wall, either,” Laura said in her monotone voice, lazily pushing a strand of greasy, red-tipped hair from her face as she scanned the eyesore, “is the dry patch of dirt their parents fucked on really worth all this?”

  Laura’s quip was lost on Akira, who couldn’t understand anything she said without tech to translate it. The tattoos exposed out of her torn, grimy t-shirt seemed to have their color sapped from them, looking more like an infected birth mark. The samurai warrior on her left shoulder dangled from what I imagined was a hidden noose beneath Akira’s sleeve, his body sickly and gaunt, the katana quivering in his meek death throes, the kozane dou about to fall away from his armor like old scabs. The fractal pattern tsunami was now stagnant water spilling over the dying warrior like a Shinto sacrilege. The red serpent slid like rotting entrails over Akira’s right shoulder exposed through a large tear in her shirt, plunging cowardly back beneath the ratty collar. The yellow, blue, green, black, and red flames made up the wyrm’s funeral pyre, fed by a repeated pattern of wilted flowers and desiccated feathers as it stretched down her right arm to the wrist.