Relics, Wrecks and Ruins

by Aiki Flinthart

  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. Sh
e 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.

  For this anthology, sales are also helping fund a writing mentorship for up and coming authors.

  About the Authors

  (in surname alphabetical order)

  Kylie Chan - has a BBus, an MBA in IT, and an MPhil in Creative writing. She ran her own consulting business for ten years in Hong Kong. When she returned to Australia in 2002, Kylie studied martial arts and Buddhist and Taoist philosophy, and wrote the bestselling nine-book Dark Heavens series, a fantasy based on Chinese mythology. She has recently released the Dragon Empire science fiction series.

  Find her at: www.kyliechan.com

  www.facebook.com/KylieChanAuthor