Flash Fiction: Handmade Souls

Her first job was to create the souls of the living, but that doesn't mean she understands what it means to be alive.

My first job was to help the Caretaker collect flesh and bones from the forests. She told me: this undesirable work is perhaps the most important task one could choose to do.

Muscle and tissue erupted as reddish-pink flowers from the crowns of mushrooms pushing their way through the soil. They formed perfect rings along the forest floor, a splash of color across an otherwise drab landscape. We’d pluck the jellied forms and lay them carefully in our sacks, rib-caged vessels tied together with ropy strings of tendon and ligament. The dry clattering of smaller bones that hung from our belts like wind-chimes punctuated our labored ambling through the under-story.

When each scrap of flesh, bit of bone, and handful of organs were gathered, we’d take our harvest to the Caretaker’s workshop and lay it out on long wooden tables, separating like pieces together in organized groups. I’d watch as she stitched together veins and stacked muscle over bone, wrapping each bit in thin gossamer sheets of tissue that made soft crackling noises when torn into long jagged strips.

What is life? I asked her as she draped delicate skin over her fleshy creations. I knew it as a concept, an inevitable fate we all shared, but I didn’t truly understand.

The Caretaker clucked her tongue, barely pausing in her work. We all have theories, she mused. I doubt any of them are correct. But it doesn’t matter. She grabbed handfuls of iridescent feathers and began threading the quills, puncturing her needle through the keratin then dipping the point into velvet skin and out again. Pulling the thread tight, the feathers layered over one another in staggered rows, giving the creation a fullness that pleased us both.

Everything, she said, is caught in a cycle. It may seem like there is an end and a beginning, but that is our limited perception. She shrugged and snapped the thread with her teeth. Stepping back from the table she smiled and held up her finished work for my admiration. Two sleek wings, the height of her arm and outstretched from fingertip to fingertip. The feathers glittered with stars caught between the barbs, galaxies swirling on a wispy backdrop of purple, blue, and green.

This holds all the material one needs in life, she explained. Bones, flesh, organs. Answers to all the questions are cradled right here between each feather. When one is ready for life, these wings will take them exactly where they need to go with everything they need to survive.

I pondered the idea of survival and shook my head. But what if the answers are forgotten? I asked. If we are part of a cycle, and no one here remembers life, why would anyone remember what death has given them?

The Caretaker pursed her lips and hummed. It doesn’t matter what we have forgotten. What matters is that we don’t lose the desire to discover, to learn our own hearts and the hearts of others. The answers are always there.