Relics, Wrecks and Ruins

Old Souls ^{By Aiki Flinthart}

On the day that could change everything for me, the sky roils in shades of grief and sorrow. Behind the fallen city, clouds curl into fists that pound the darkening sky and cracked earth. Crumbling buildings—broken teeth in a vast, voiceless mouth—throw purple shadows through warped glass and onto the cottage’s bare floor. Fine white dust billows before the storm, rushes towards the village that huddles between the sluggish river and tangled, regrowing forest.

The men of the house pace outside on the porch in the fading light. Their boots grate on sand; their coughs and muttered conversation are almost inaudible over a distant rumble of thunder. They will stay there until I call, for they are not needed for the birth of a girl nor the death of an old woman.

As the storm thickens, I instruct Maya, the elderly soul-bringer, to shutter the windows. Best to keep out any wind-borne toxins left by the long-vanished, unsouled civilization. New lungs should take their first breaths in a clean world; start fresh—as our people had so many years ago. After the collapse.

Lying on the bloodied bed, her traditional black shift high on her hips, Allody pushes back sweat-soaked hair and blinks blearily at me.

“Is it time, Soul-Master Jena?” the young mother-to-be whispers, her face drawn with the pain of a long labor.

“I’m not…” I resist the restless impulse to deny the title of soul-master or to shove bloody fingers through my short hair. I’ve done this a hundred times and more. I am twenty-seven. Young for the honor to come, but experienced enough to deserve it.

Maybe this will be the one.

My grandmother used to be a soul-breaker, like me. She never made it to soul-master. Perhaps this time I’ll finally earn the title. The title my grandmother deserved. Then I can finish her work. Show the Council how wrong they are.

“Yes, it’s time,” I say to Allody and check the baby’s crowning head. “One more push.” A pair of blue-metal scissors lies heavy in my hand. Heavy and sharp. The cutting of so many cords and souls has yet to dull their edge. Mine, yes. The scissors’, no. “Is your soul-bringer ready?”

Old Maya touches her forehead in a commoner’s sign of respect to a soul-master and shuffles back to her granddaughter’s bed. “I’m ready, Soul-Master Jena.”

I can’t let it pass a second time, much as I want to.

“I’m not yet a master.” I try to keep my voice steady and calm. “Still a breaker. Maybe soon, though. Perhaps…” I brandish the scissors; the symbol and tool of my office, “…the piece of your soul I break off so I can bind the rest to this little babe will elevate me to master and into the Council.” I give a tight smile. “We never know which soul-bringing and breaking will do it. Not until I cut the cord.”

Let it be this time, I pray silently. If breaking for this child paves my path to joining the Council, there is a chance the soul-masters will finally listen to me. Then we can save more people from this painful, unnecessary form of passing.

I shouldn’t have to replace one life with another. We have enough food and water to support bigger families.

All lives are of value, not just the newborn.

I touch Maya’s blue-veined hand. “I do hope it’s this birth. The family that helps a breaker to become a master is richly rewarded by the Council.”

“That’d be nice,” Maya agrees. “Nice to leave my grandbaby and her girl a softer path through this world. Softer than the one I had, anyways.”

It takes an effort not to glance around the small cottage, with its uneven walls and floor made of broken concrete. The storm winds whistle through gaps stuffed with rags and mud. A faint haze of dust, smelling of ancient, bitter death, swirls in the room. She’s right. Even in these times, under the too-careful governance of the Council, some have easier lives than others.

Allody lets out a little gasp and presses a hand to her side. “Breaker Jena!”

“Hurry, now, Maya,” I say. “The babe will come any moment. You must be ready for the taking. We only have the small time it takes for you to pass over, to transfer your soul to the child. And it must be completed within half an hour of first breath or your soul-offering won’t bind to her.”

With a weary sigh, Maya lets her long gray hair loose from its bun and discards layer upon layer of patched, gray and brown shawls and skirts. I don’t help. As the mother of two and grandmother of two, she knows what to do. She has been prepared since we knew Allody was having a girl and needed a female soul-bringer.

Finally, clad only in the bringer’s traditional scarlet shift, Maya crawls into bed with the mother-to-be. Their hands clasp. Tears shimmer in both sets of rust-brown eyes.

“You sure, Grandma?” Allody asks, her voice breaking. “I’ll miss you so much!”

Her grandmother nods. “This body is old and tired. Time for a new one.” Her wrinkled smile widens. “Anyways, you wouldn’t want your baby to be an unsouled, would you? Caring for naught but themselves. Killing off the world with greed.” She jerks a thumb at the window, at the ruins silhouetted against a stormy sunset. “You know how it goes. A life for a life. An old soul into a new body. Gotta break and bind to keep the goodness in.”

This is the way of things since the passing of the unsouled and their near destruction of our world. But it doesn’t need to be. I press my lips tight, holding in the urge to lecture. This ridiculous old belief must stop.

Could I…? I glance at the young mother. No, not this time. Here, there’s no way to hide what I want to do. She’s healthy and the birth easy. Her husband and father stand outside, waiting to witness the ceremony; waiting for the new little soul-taker to absorb Maya’s worn soul, minus the small piece I break off as my fee.

The men, the women, the whole village. They all wait for the child to no longer be an unsouled. No longer dangerous, like those whose city crumbles in the storm.

So we’re told.

No. This is not the child on whom to continue my tests. I need another birth with no witnesses and no soul-bringer. No blind followers of the Council’s doctrines.

Five women are gravid in this village and four in the next, including my own little sister—gentle, widowed, Freya. Soon there will be another newborn I do not have to break for or take for. Soon the Council will see their rituals are nothing but hollowness and control. Lies of spun sugar. Sweeteners for the bitterness of killing a grandparent to allow room for a baby in the world.

And they must see it, since there is no one to be Freya’s soul-bringer. If I help her birth an unsouled and the Council finds out, they will kill the child. Freya’s child. My family. That, I cannot allow.

Allody grunts and gives a little, whimpering cry. Her face reddens and she holds her breath. The child slides free of her mother’s body. Born into blood and storms.

I check her over while we wait for the afterbirth. The scissors cut through the cord with the strange crunching sound that always unnerves new mothers. Then I clean and swaddle and place the child between the two women.

Delight, regret, love, awareness of coming grief… all their feelings shine unguarded as Maya and Allody cradle the child and croon over tiny perfection.

At my call, the child’s father, uncle and grandfather shuffle into the room, hats in hand, bringing the dusty scent of death and the cold smell of autumn rain with them. When they stand, awed and awkward in the corner, I begin the final ritual.

The familiar Song of Taking falls from my mouth almost unheeded, its tune first rising, then cascading down. A minor key. Wistful. Full of loss. Behind me the men give forth soft harmonies that fill the room with gentle regret. Learned in childhood. Passed on from generation to generation, along with a belief that the souls are carried on cadence and rhythms and melody from one body to the next.

Reinforcing the Council’s grip on the world.

I hold the scissors in a trembling hand. There has to be another method. Why is it a life for a life, a soul given and taken? Surely it hasn’t always been this way?

Maya’s faded gaze catches mine. Her mouth twists into a wry, understanding smile. “Come, Breaker. You brought baby Dek, next door, into the world without help or singers last week, I hear. He is hale. Now it’s my great-grandchild’s turn.”

With fingers of paper and bird bone, she grasps my wrist. I swallow and steel myself to match the metal.

Maya’s hand is wrapped around mine, and mine around the scissor handles. Together we slip the sleek blue blades between her ribs. Her rheumy eyes fix on the babe then on Allody. Tears stream down the new mother’s face and she whispers “Thank you” to her grandmother.

Maya’s body tenses. A gasp flutters from her lips. Her blood stains the sheets and the child’s swaddling.

My fingers and blades glisten red as I cut her soul free of the small organ just below her heart. The pale, shining mirror of who she was falls into my waiting hand. A flat plane, like glass. A sharp reflection off water on a clean summer’s day.

Soul colors vary. Hers is the clearest, brightest I’ve seen in a while. Not a smudge of darkness to be seen. A good soul. The child will grow up kind and thoughtful.

If you believe the Council’s teachings.

I hesitate. No. I must follow through this time. I break a small shard off and hold it tight in one hand. It is cold, yet hot at once. Pains tingle up my arm but I cannot release it to freedom, or the binding won’t hold.

Allody unwraps her child. The baby girl’s legs kick feebly. Her little, perfect fingers grab at nothing. Dark hair lies plastered to her scalp.

With delicate care, I insert the largest part of her great-grandmother’s soul between brittle little ribs. She squalls and Allody stares at me, wide-eyed.

“It’s alright,” I reassure her. “That’s normal. It hurts and it won’t bind until I also put the broken piece where it belongs. But then it will heal without a scar and I’ll sing her to sleep.”

Next, I open my hand and catch the final splinter of Maya’s life between the scissor blades. A glittering fragment that will soon be part of me. Sucking a slow breath, I sing the soul-breaker’s song, trying to control the quaver in my voice. Major scale this time. A steady, unchanging tempo. A song of yearning. Of hope for the future, even when I can’t see any.

The blades cut neatly through the thick, pink scar tissue over my ribs. I barely feel the sting anymore. With my eyes closed, I find my soul’s holding place easily enough. The scissors drive further, in amongst the myriad of tiny fragments that are my broken, borrowed bits of soul.

That, I always feel. The pain of sliced flesh followed by the sharper, deeper, darker pain of carrying more and more pieces of other peoples’ lives.

How many can I hold? My mentor on the Council of soul-masters never mentioned such pain.

I withdraw the scissors.

I feel no different.

Not this time, then.

My jaw aches with tension. My shoulders, too.

Surely, I’ve taken enough? Broken enough. Absorbed enough. Killed enough grandparents. Bound enough squalling infants to goodness.

When will these endless exchanges end and leave me enlightened; wise; a soul-master? Able to change the Council’s old ways for new.

My throat closes but I continue to sing. The men’s voices swell into joy and brilliance, filling the tiny room, clearing a way through the thunder now raging outside.

I dab my blood onto the babe’s closed wound, and murmur her new name, Maya. And it is done. She ceases to cry. Her blue eyes open and stare straight at me with her great-grandmother’s look of wisdom already showing.

Beside the child, old Maya’s eyes blank and her final breath slips free on a soft sigh.

I am drenched when I reach my sister’s cottage, one village away. The storm has softened to a drizzle of tears, but another chases after and will roll over the house soon. Lightning claws at the low clouds. Thunder growls a second later.

My soul-breaker’s blue cloak is soaked through, the wool darkened to midnight. It weighs on my shoulders as heavily as old Maya’s death weighs on my mind. Things shouldn’t be this way.

I open our little house’s thick wooden door and hang my cloak to dry. My boots go neatly beside my sister’s… and another two pairs.

One I recognize. They belonged to my brother-in-law, but Freya can’t yet bear to give them away. Redil died six months ago. The unsouled’s city crushed him as he searched for salvage materials to fix a neighbor’s roof.

He was a good man. Kind. Intelligent. Now, he is lost. A human that cannot be replaced under the Council’s current laws. Just because his soul could not be retrieved in time and no new soul-takers were born.

I pause, staring at the other pair of boots. They are soul-master green. The color of the old forests, of algae, of envy. Veloni is here. My Council mentor and supervisor. The one who disagrees most with my ideas for how to move our people onto a more certain path to survival.

In the narrow entryway of neatly laid stone and thickly plastered walls, I rest my head against the wall and close my eyes. My body hurts. It always takes me a day or so to recover from a soul-break and absorption. But this is worse than usual. All of me aches and blood still seeps through the cut between my ribs. Have I done something wrong?

Or is it a sign that I’m close to transforming into a soul-master? Is that why Veloni is here?

The thought gives me strength. I transfer the blue-metal scissors to my skirt pocket and head for the warmth of the living space where the smell of rabbit stew lingers and my sister awaits my return.

“Jena!” Freya rises awkwardly from her seat before the fire. One hand presses into the small of her back, another helps push her from the chair. A grimace crosses her delicate, pale features. She is thinner than she should be at this late stage of pregnancy. The loss of Redil stole her appetite and her smile at once. I hurry to her side and help her stand. Her breath comes in quick little gasps. One hand strokes her swollen belly.

But she clasps my cold fingers with her warm ones. “You’re back safe. I was beginning to worry.” Her dark-shadowed eyes search my face and flick an uneasy look toward Veloni, seated in the second chair. If Freya is trying to give me a message, I cannot read it. I kiss her cheek and turn toward my mentor.

“Master Veloni.” I touch two fingers to the still-tender spot on my ribs in the traditional salute between soul-breakers and soul-masters.

She rises from the cracked-leather chair and returns the greeting. Her long, graying hair is tied in an intricate knot, decorated with simple wooden beads. Over a plain gray linen shift, she still wears her emerald cloak. So… she arrived before the storm broke and didn’t expect to stay long. I repress a smile for having kept her waiting.

There is an awkward silence as she looks me over, with one brow arched, dark eyes cool, narrow face a mask. My pale blue tunic is still spattered with blood. My hair damp and flat. I try not to fidget. I have helped as many children into the world as she ever did before becoming a master. More, in fact.

Thunder booms over the house, shaking stone and rattling glass.

Veloni switches her chill glance to Freya. “You will leave us in private.”

Freya starts, her eyes widening. She touches her forehead and hurries from the room. The bedroom door closes, but it’s thin enough that she can hear if she tries. And she will. We’ve always looked after each other.

I take a seat without being asked. It is my house, after all. The cushion is still warm from where Freya rested. It smells faintly of jasmine, her favorite flower. With a gracious wave I invite Veloni back into what is usually my seat.

Her lips thin for a moment, but she sits on the edge, her spine straight. Leather creaks beneath her. I deliberately relax, trying to ignore the heavy thudding of my heart, certain it must be audible in the silence between growls of thunder. A log cracks sharply in the fireplace, spitting sparks. My muscles tense but I keep my calm expression of inquiry.

Let her speak first. I will not be the supplicant again. Not until I’m a master. It’s been made clear to me, many times, that I’m below notice until then. The Council can’t be changed from the outside.

Veloni breaks our locked gaze first and brushes at her skirt, wiping away invisible obstacles to order.

“It has come to our attention,” she begins without looking at me, “that there are twenty-three children in the three villages you service.”

I suppress a smile and wait. Of course there are children, I resist saying. It’s my job.

She clears her throat. Her eyes—the tannin brown of deep forest pools—lift to mine. She examines my face like a panther waiting for the right moment to pounce. Waiting for me to make a mistake.

But I won’t. I’ve worked too hard for this. She’ll see I’m right. They all will.

Leaning forward, she narrows her gaze. “Twenty-three unsouled children in your villages.”

“And?” I lift both brows and allow a small smile to curl my lips. The Council can do nothing now. The children are too old to be soul-takers and their designated soul-bringers died at the births, believing their souls had been passed on to the newborns. But I crushed the pieces and scattered the glittering fragments of finished lives into the air. They floated, sparkling dust in the sunlight.

“Why would you do that?” Veloni’s tone is sharp. A frown pulls her thin brows close. She points vaguely at the cottage front door. “Why would you risk everything the Council has achieved since the fall of the unsouled cities? Everything we’ve planned?”

I grip the chair arms, my fingertips white. “Because you don’t listen.”

“Pfah!” She dismisses me with a wave. “We listened. Over and over. To you and to your grandmother, before. You want to let children be born without them receiving the souls of their elders. It is you who have not listened.”

My control breaks and I rise, standing over her. “I do. I listen to grandparents cry as they give up their souls and their lives too early. I listen to their families sing with voices strangled by tears. I listen to the sound of my scissors cutting the throats of children who have no soul-giver. Then I listen to their mothers cry in my embrace. And I have no comfort to give them but to say ‘The Council rules it so.’”

I rest my hands on her chair and push my face close to hers, whispering because my chest is too tight to hold enough breath for a shout.

“You,” I say. “You and the Council make me murder children for want of a soul they do not need. And I’ve proven that. Those twenty-three unsouled children are perfectly fine. Healthy. Happier than soul-takers, even. Their eyes are eager and innocent, not weighed down by tired old souls that have lived through too much loss.”

Veloni’s eyes glitter. Her jaw hardens then she opens lips stretched into thin slits.

A muffled cry of pain sounds from the bedroom. Something thuds against the door, then the floor. Another cry. More like a scream.

“Freya!” I rush to the door and push it open against a heavy weight on the other side. A watery, pinkish liquid smears across the flagstones.

Freya is slumped on the floor, arms wrapped about her belly, weeping. Darkness stains her shift.

“It’s coming, Jen,” she says, gasping. “But it’s too early.”

“No,” I reply, trying to sound soothing. “It’s fine. Only a couple of weeks. The babe will be fine.” But my heart stutters. She can’t lose the child as well as Redil.

I help her onto the huge bed we share and hurry about preparing hot water and cloths. My mind races. I had planned for her child to be unsouled, but how can I do that now, with my mentor in the room?

Veloni hasn’t left. She stands in a corner, watching, impassive, arms folded.

She speaks when all is ready and I am checking Freya’s progress. The babe is crowning already. But Freya is pale and disoriented, babbling and crying for Redik to come to her.

“Who is the soul-bringer?” Veloni’s voice is calm, dispassionate.

“There is none,” I say, countering her heavy sigh with a glare. “And I will not kill my sister’s child because of the Council’s blindness.”

Veloni shakes her head. “Then we must find one.” Thunder crashes and rain drums so loud on the patched metal roof I can barely hear Freya’s cry of pain.

I grin savagely. “There is none close enough to get here within the required half hour after birth.”

Her gaze narrows. “Boy or girl?”

I hesitate, but, in the end, there’s really nothing she can do to stop what’s coming. The child will be unsouled. Veloni will see there is no harm in such children. That they are the way of the future. The way to stop all this unneeded killing.

“Girl,” I say. “The babe will be a girl.”

Triumph gleams in Veloni. “Then Freya must be the soul-bringer.”

A gasp escapes me. Standing between my mentor and my sister, I pull out my blue-metal scissors. “No! She’s too young. You, yourself taught me that only those over fifty can be soul-bringers!”

Veloni tilts her head. “Do you know why that rule exists? Do you really understand what breakers and masters do? What the Council does?”

“How can I? The Council holds their secrets too close.” My words are bitter, my clutch on the scissors tight. She will not have my sister or my niece.

“Exactly,” she says, her mouth drooping. “But did you ever wonder why?”

I glance back at Freya. Her brow is beaded with sweat, her skin too pale. “We can speak of this later. I need to save my family. Do what you will with me after.”

Veloni grips my wrist, wrenching the scissors from me. She shoves them at my face.

“You fool. You don’t understand and that is why you will never become a master. Just as your grandmother failed to.”

I fold my arms and glower. “Go ahead. Explain it, then. What won’t I understand? Why won’t I become a master? I can’t wait to hear how the wise and all-knowing Council has decided my fate.” I check Freya. She has fallen into a light doze and the babe’s head has slipped out of sight again. I have a little time. Anything Veloni says I can turn against the Council when I am brought before them.

As I will be, for this birth and the other twenty-three.

I am beyond caring. Their rules are madness. Outdated, two-hundred-year-old laws for controlling the few souled folk who lived through the unsouled civilization’s collapse. The laws need to change if we are to thrive, not just survive in this miserable, hand-to-mouth existence.

Veloni’s lined cheeks sag and she sinks onto the bed edge. She looks at Freya with a weariness beyond her sixty-five years.

“When you were born, Jena, I argued against apprenticing you as a soul-breaker.”

I stiffen but bite my tongue. Her admission shouldn’t surprise me. I’ve long known she dislikes me.

“There was something amiss with your grandmother, too.” She raises her head and tears glisten in the corners of her eyes. “She was my best friend. We were breakers together. But she never understood. And nor will you.”

I frown, swallowing down rage and holding it tight in my clenched fists. “What does that mean? What was she supposed to understand? What am I supposed to understand?”

Veloni scrubs a hand over her face. “Every generation there are a few children for whom the soul-taking does not work at birth. They remain unsouled. The Council makes them soul-breakers.”

The breath leaves my lungs and my knees give way. I sink onto the bed. A strange kind of relief warms my stomach. Perhaps this is why I have always felt so separate from my kith and kin. Perhaps this is why I am so sure the unsouled can be the salvation of humanity’s future.

“So, you…” I point at her, then back at myself. “…and I…?”

“Yes. You are an unsouled. As was I. But we don’t stay that way.” Veloni frowns as she watches me.

My heart stops, stutters, starts again, but faster—as though urging me to run from what she will say. I still don’t understand why she seems to think being unsouled is terrible, so I stay.

She hesitates then plunges on, speaking fast. “The reason that breakers absorb a small portion of each bringer’s soul is to gain, over time, what they were unable to take in one piece at birth.” She leans forward and grips my hand. “But the souls aren’t just giving life, Jena. They give knowledge.”

With a sigh, she glances at Freya. “What the bringer knows. What they’ve learned. The person they’ve become. What they carry from their soul-bringer. All that is passed on to the soul-taker. It means most children already know how to be kind and generous. How to treat others with respect. How to care for the land. How to construct a house. Everything. And each generation builds on that knowledge.” She gives a soft, sad laugh. “Oh, they still have to learn things, but it takes less time than it takes an unsouled child. Much less.”

I fling my arms wide. “So what? Why does it matter how long it takes them to learn?”

Her pitying gaze dwells on me until I squirm. For the first time, the awareness of things unknown and unlearned is a hollowness in my chest.

Veloni points south. “That city. That’s why. The unsouled who came before us almost destroyed the world in their arrogance and greed. Their lack of respect for others.” She rises, her stockinged feet silent as she paces the room. “Each generation made the same mistakes. Sought nothing but self-aggrandizement and power.” She jabs a finger at me. “Because, like you and your grandmother, they could not learn fast enough to prevent the mistakes made in their youth. And it snowballed. Generation upon generation caring only for their own comfort and wealth.”

She brings her hands together sharply. Thunder and lightning crash overhead and I jump.

Her hands fall, limp, to her sides.

“Until it was too late. We still don’t quite understand what killed them all at once.” Her shoulders slump. “Just that the survivors were mostly the souled ones. Then we discovered that even their children were often born without souls. But most can inherit one if it’s bound properly. And with it came knowledge. Such knowledge.”

She pauses and stares through me. “Our world consists of a hundred and twenty villages, Jena. All that is left of humanity. A little over a hundred and twenty thousand souled people with the knowledge and wisdom not to repeat past mistakes.”

“And?” I prompt when she stops again. My fury has died with the storm’s passing, leaving me cold and empty. I can no longer see my path quite so clearly. My way is muddied by fear now. Fear that I have strayed and cannot find the way home. That I have been naïve. That I lack… knowledge.

“And,” she repeats on a sigh, “to keep the expertise of old souls alive, we have to limit the population in number, to allow life only to those who can be soul-takers. Plus a few who will become breakers and finally masters. This is the Council’s true function.”

“But…” My voice is small, my throat so thick it chokes the words. “But I don’t understand. I’m a soul-breaker. Why can’t I be a master? What’s wrong with me?” I touch my ribs. Blood has oozed through the scar tissue and stained my tunic scarlet, the color of a soul-bringer’s shift.

Veloni grasps my hands so tightly the scissors she still carries press hard into my flesh. Her expression is earnest. Truthful. Pleading, almost.

“We breakers can’t take in an old soul. Instead…” She lifts a shoulder and her gaze slides from mine, “…we break off and steal a little of each soul we pass from bringer to taker. And, in doing so, most of us inherit all of that person’s knowledge.” She touches the spot on her chest above where the soul-holding organ sits. “When this is full, we become wise enough to govern.”

Her face sags again. “Yours will never be full, I’m afraid. Something in your body cannot absorb the soul shards. The weight of their wisdom is too much, perhaps. I’m sorry. You can never be a master.”

I pull free of her touch and rise from the bed. I am flawed? My stomach twists into sickness. How can that be? The answers seemed so clear before.

Outside the bedroom window, lightning still flashes in the distance, but the storm has passed overhead, leaving nothing but the sound of dripping water and the clean smell of wet earth. To the south, the broken city is silhouetted against a yawning, golden moon.

I glance across at Freya. Her eyes are half open but still tired and vacant. She writhes on the bed, moaning. Veloni turns her back on me and tends to Freya, encouraging her to push the babe into the world. Freya’s daughter child will come, soon, and I no longer have an easy solution. Even without the driving rain, there is no way to fetch a soul-bringer in time.

Veloni is bent over the bed, my blue-metal scissors in her hand, ready to cut the child’s throat. Or ready to take my sister’s soul and leave my little niece without a family. For there is no way the Council will let me live after this either.

I reach deep inside, searching for the rage and certainty that fueled me for so long.

But it has vanished like the storm.

Soon, all that will be left is the sound of blood dripping from the blades.

Unless…

I move to the clothes cupboard. Behind me, Freya groans and Veloni urges her to push hard. My sister cries out, triumphant, relieved. A baby’s wail follows, thin, petulant.

From the cupboard I draw a scarlet soul-bringer’s shift. Discarding my breaker’s clothing I pull on the shift and return to the bed. Veloni nods.

There, I curl up beside my little sister, clasping her cold hand in my warm one. The new babe lies swaddled and sleepy between us. Freya’s eyes flutter open and widen at the sight of my clothing.

She sucks a shuddering breath. “Are you sure, Jena? I’ll miss you so much.”

I swallow hard and nod. “This body is wrong for this world. But, with all of my soul-shards in her, baby Jena will make wiser decisions than I did.” I nod to my mentor, who inclines her head, her eyes dark, regretful.

With my blue-metal blades, Veloni slices through scarlet linen and pink scar tissue and draws forth the first piece of someone else’s soul. Bright and clean. Glittering in the half-light. Not a hint of darkness smudging it anywhere.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this diverse collection of short stories. If so, would you be kind enough to leave a review on Goodreads, and any book retail sites you happen to prefer? Reviews help other readers find authors they love. Then authors don’t die of starvation.

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