And perhaps duckling she would always have remained, to remind me of my smiling youth and my father and all of the other good, good things that had come my way.

But that, too, is when the voice of the Company came into my head, or perhaps it was the ghost of the ghost of my mother. In the last days, who could tell the difference? That was when the Company told me to transform the duckling into a duck. A duck with a broken wing. And to house what remained of my father’s brain within the duck.

And I believe it was a test for all of my days—that the Company wanted me to sacrifice the thing I had the most pride in, that I might no longer have pride and that I might obey the Company in all things.

So I made my duckling into a duck, and I did this in the blink of an eye. After twenty years, the duckling became the dark bird in only the space and slice of an eye. A day and a night. But it did not drive her mad. It made her greater than herself. I swear it. What drove her mad was the mission where she brought back Sarah, and I will not talk about that. It was not my fault.

And when things began to go bad all the way through, I was not to blame. I had been the one to listen to the voice in my head, even after I wasn’t sure if it was still from the Company but instead from God. I was the one who had rescued so many lost souls by remaking them in the magical garden.

But I could not predict Nocturnalia anymore, no how know how, for it had gotten beyond us. But I could not understand how chaos could be controlled all across the City because I did not know how no how it could be controlled within my self.

O and lo, then I needed the dark bird ever more, for so many special missions. To hold back the end of it all. To hold firm. To give me time. Which was all I ever needed, from beginning to end.

The dark bird that was the duckling that was me. That was my father.

Fly away dark bird, fly away. Far from here. With your broken wing.

I am mad, you see, and know it. And yet I know things.

Murder control clicking like a switch flipped like a click like a cut like a blood-covered switch that clicked … off. For a time.