Edith Beaubien

Mortal Days

Upon her formal debut in the summer of 1889, the only thing connecting Edith Beaubien to her Native ancestors was an album of faded photographs hidden in the attic of her Métis family’s Prairie Avenue mansion. The belle of Chicago, her suitors were scions of powerful men. The only other young woman who could rival her in beauty, charm, and accomplishments was her best friend Mavis, heiress-apparent of the Blackwaters, another old Métis family whose wealth was built upon trade. All the land surrounding the Great Lakes belonged to their people, Mavis told her, and someday, according to Grandmother Nerissa, it would all belong to them again.

The line of respectable men waiting to wed her bored Edith rigid and her family offered little entertainment. The recently arrived carnival provided the perfect excuse to avoid her obligations and slip away with Mavis to partake in all the delights promised by the traveling show.

The tattooed lady, with her neck, chest, arms, and legs covered in bold black outlines and riotously colored designs, captivated her attention. The woman radiated confidence and power, and when she spoke, she did so with educated eloquence. Edith watched with equal parts horror and fascination as the tattooist, a beautiful young man with dark eyes and an easy smile named Lau Fu, tapped rhythmically on the long, needle-tipped stick delivering ink into the woman’s flesh. It was an arresting act of defiance and liberty that allured Edith. The night before the carnival left town, Edith packed a small bag and slipped out of the servants’ entrance.

It was naivete on her part, thinking that her parents would simply let her vanish with a foreign lover. It took five years for the Pinkertons to find her and Lau Fu. They murdered him in front of her — all of it was something out of a terrible nightmare. Bleeding, sobbing, she struggled to reach Lau Fu, to kiss him one last time before the light left his eyes forever. The vampire who found her in this way didn’t know why he felt the call to Embrace her, but couldn’t stop himself from doing so.

Kindred Nights

While Edith plumbed the depths of grief for Lau Fu, sharp spurs of bone erupted down her spine, her fingernails extended into claws, and her bicuspids became fangs. She was hideous. Yet, despite the empty ache in her heart, Edith felt bliss. Khalid, the wise, old vampire who sired her, proved to be a worthy Mawla who pushed her to expand the horizons of her learning. She traveled far and wide, settling for a while in San Francisco, where the influx of immigrants from Asia brought methods of tattooing heretofore unknown in the United States. After the great earthquake of 1907, she rejoined Khalid in Chicago, established her own tattoo parlor, and settled into the rhythms of unlife.

During the Lupine attack, Edith sustained grave injuries but managed to escape beneath the surface of Lake Michigan where she drifted in and out of torpor, experiencing electrifying visions of a vast garden overgrowing the entire Great Lakes region. In her dreams, beautiful and terrible figures slumbered in the muddy depths, and like the slip of a distant melody, they cried softly to their Mother.

Edith emerged from the water to find all her tattoos and deformities vanished, a condition that persisted for a full night and a day of sleep. Waiting on the shore was Mavis, impossibly unaged and in the company of a small, handsome woman with eyes like the night sky. Edith was transformed beneath the lake and bound in service to the submerged Ancestor. Her deformities and body modifications eventually returned, but her mind now belonged to the Mother.