A Soul of Light

As an imperial necromancer, your duty is to see that criminals with consecutive life sentences serve their full term. As you are stitching a soul back into its body, to serve its fourth term, you can't help but notice how clean it is - this one appears to be innocent.

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“Next.”

Your apprentice wheels in a body on a table. Male, late seventies by the look of him. White hair, lined face, downy hair sprouting from his nostrils and ears. His eyes are closed, but you’re nearly certain they’d be light brown.

As you prepare your needle, whittled from a hummingbird’s bone because they are the only creatures that exist outside of time, the apprentice leaves the room and returns with a lantern. She sets it down at your side and asks if there’s anything else she can help with before she gets back to her paperwork.

“No, child,” you tell her. “But I believe it’s time for you to start observing The Stitching.”

Her face lights up and she settles into a chair beside you, nearly bursting with excitement. You take the lantern into your hands, warm like grass on a summer day, and place it at the dead man’s feet. It illuminates his callused toes and yellowing nails. Slowly, so as not to startle the soul, you tease open the lantern. The soul inside shudders and shrinks back, the light dimming slightly – not its first time around, then.

Your apprentice watches silently as you draw out a tendril of soul, spinning it into a fine gossamer thread. With a quick movement, you capture it in the eye of the needle. The soul resists slightly – this isn’t its nature, after all, to be woven back into its corporeal house – but a gentle pulse of magic calms it.

You start with the feet, to ground the soul back into its body. As you stitch it back in with tiny back-and-forth motions, you feel the perforations that indicate a repeat offender. They offer the needle little resistance, but still some; this will be his fourth life sentence, it seems. You glance up at your apprentice and nod at her to approach. She stands opposite you as the needle darts in and out of the man’s skin, no blood left to leak out.

With the feet done, you spool out more of the soul. As you do, its color catches the light and you draw in a breath. Most repeat offenders, their souls are dark and troubled, churning like the sea in a storm. But this one…it is diaphanous and light, spider’s silk instead of molasses.

Your apprentice sees your hesitation and asks if something is wrong. You are silent for a long time as you trace your way along the soul’s thread, feeling for aberrations. You find none.

Your heart seizes in your chest. This – this is his fourth life sentence? He has been on the table before, stitched back in by others of your order? How could no one have seen that, clearly, a mistake has been made? But then, you realize, you didn’t notice at first either.

“This man,” you tell your apprentice quietly, “he is innocent.”

She draws back, her eyebrows knitting together. You too feel as though this should be impossible – how could an innocent man have been allowed to serve three full life sentences? It’s inhumane.

“What can we do?” your apprentice asks in a low voice, looking over the man’s still form.

You think for a moment. He has already lost so much time, been subjected to so much pain. How can you make that up to him?

“Hold this.”

You pass the lantern to your apprentice and she dutifully cradles it against her chest. Painstakingly, you remove the soul thread from the needle and begin to unstitch it from the body. The soul fights you, uncertain of what is happening. It only knows two things, and this is not one of them. You tease the soul free with slow, gently movements, trying to show it care and compassion. Your intentions bleed into the soul through your fingers, and it stops resisting, instead winding itself around your hands.

As you pull the stitches loose, you think of happy memories. The soul responds with its own. Its glow brightens with each one. Your apprentice catches on and she trails a finger along the tendril of soul trailing from the lantern, feeding it her own happiness. When the last stitch is free, the soul separated from its body once more, the light it holds banishes every shadow from the room.

You gesture for your apprentice to give the lantern back and she does. The soul within is fire – it is free.

With a flick of your hand, you open a portal to the Beyond. The soul reaches forward, then hesitates. But the call of peace and light is strong, and once more the soul approaches the portal. In an instant, it slips through and is gone. 

You both let out a breath you didn’t realize you were holding. The room suddenly feels dark and heavy once more, the man on the table now just a body forever. You set the empty lantern at his feet.

“Next.”