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  THE SOUL INSIDE

  M. Telsch-Williams

  Copyright 2020 Margaret Telsch-Williams

  All rights reserved.

  APRIS TOOK THE RACCOON APART PIECE BY PIECE. First the skin, then the guts, each organ laid out on the table in order. A re-creation, as if all the pieces could fuse back together and come alive.

  Next, she boiled down the carcass until the meat fell away from the bone. All of that muscle and connective tissue she tossed onto the back stoop for the dogs. They loved the stuff, while she was only interested in one thing: the bones.

  Like the organs, she pieced the raccoon bones back together on a cloth in the sun to dry them out, but not before piercing the ends of some of them with nails and leaving the nails in place.

  All the while, she sang and chanted; she blessed the animal—the spirit and the bones.

  Ah, the bones. All of those beautiful knuckle bones which gripped spells the best. Femurs capable of withstanding strong spells. Humerus bones which encircled the spells and held them. Then there was the skull, scapula, and pelvis—knowledge, protection, and movement—in that order. Finally, the ribs which caged spells and kept them safe. Forget the spine. Too many small pieces to enchant all at once, and many people, she found, didn't have one anyway.

  It wasn't that Apris was morbid, but the bones kept her company and she called them Sweets, no matter where they came from or which piece it was.

  This time, Sweets found her in the woods not a mile from her cottage. She'd been collecting mushrooms and wild herbs when the unmistakable smell of passage wafted by her. She sniffed, like a deer, until she located the body. Then she sat by Sweets' side.

  “It's okay, now. I found you,” Apris said, as she stroked the animal's fur, sending the buzzing flies into fits.

  “I always find you.”

  Days later, once the bones dried, she began weaving a fortune enchantment into the raccoon’s delicate paw. Bleached from the sun, the whiteness of Sweets' bones blinded, so she worked swiftly, teasing the magic forward and infusing it all the way into the marrow. Her fingers caressed the nail beds. Her palm cupped the tiny hand which knew how to hold baby kits, to rinse walnuts in the creek, to climb into the safety of trees.

  She became so transfixed, in fact, that the shotgun blast startled her out of her skin. She dropped Sweets' paw. Carpals and metacarpals scattered apart across the kitchen floor like pennies sliding across a table.

  Nobody should be shooting this near to her property. She'd posted all the right signs according to the law, and spoke all the right words according to the spell.

  Heart reflecting her rapid breathing, Apris raced to the window in time to spot the massive loping roll of a grizzly's brown back as it lumbered up the hillside forty feet away. So, there was the bear, but where was the hunter?

  More importantly, was the bear hurt?

  Panicked, she stormed toward the dining table and yanked her satchel off the back of a chair. Into the bag she stuffed a cloth-wrapped slice of bread, a leather pouch filled with bobcat teeth, and a chipmunk skull. If the hunter didn't finish the job, the least she could do was heal the injury.

  Apris stepped into her boots and snagged a burgundy wool wrap before hurrying outside. The pungent smell of Nitroglycerin laced the early fall air. The grizzly had headed up the hillside, after which the woods would grow deeper on the descent until it reached Switch Creek. From there, Crescent Gorge split the mountain in two.

  Listening for the hunter and not hearing anything right off, she began her trek up the hill. She couldn't catch up to the bear while it ran, pushing speeds of thirty miles per hour, but after a while it would tire, and she could track it up to the point she found it.

  An hour after following snapped branches, the claw gouges in the earth appeared closer together. The animal had slowed.

  Apris kept her pace but lightened her gait. She never heard or spotted the hunter. Perhaps they missed their target and only startled the bear, but as she passed by the second waist-high, blood-smeared leaf, it confirmed the reality of the situation.

  With her wrap drawn tight around her shoulders to block the cool, shaded air of the afternoon, she continued her descent downward and navigated through the thick brush until she spotted the furry, panting mound of the bear against a tree beside the creek bank.

  A low rumble, not quite a growl, but enough to determine the massive animal had exhausted its energy. Labored breathing, snorting, and the smell of sweet tundra grass when it dries gave her the image of the soul inside—Sweets waiting to be released, waiting to be held.

  No. She couldn't.

  Sweets wasn't here; the bear was here.

  A scared animal whose power diminished with each passing minute where the blood seeped into fur and clumped there.

  An outcry.

  The four-hundred-pound creature was hurting, in distress.

  Ursus arctos horribilis. The grizzly moaned.

  Apris inched closer, attempting to keep herself concealed behind wide trunks and downwind.

  Her chest ached.

  She couldn't stand to watch an animal in pain, suffering needlessly.

  Brushing her frizz of hair behind her ears, she double-checked the contents of her satchel. She had the chipmunk skull, she could help it, but she'd only be able to do so if the bear allowed her to.

  Damn.

  She sent a prayer to the creek, the trees, the downed leaves beneath them both. Instilling calm was of essential importance when working with injured animals or children. They can't speak like adults, can't reason with you on holding still even when something burns or stings. Animals never waited for second chances. Children rarely gave them.

  Her thumb traced over the edges of the tiny skull, fingers lingering at the eye sockets, aiming to see better the ragged tunnel the bullet created when it exploded into the grizzly's hide. She could help it. She could heal it.

  Yet Sweets, in beautiful harshness, called to her, begged to be held, caressed.

  Apris steadied her grip on the skull as she crept forward.

  Shifting on its haunches, the bear sniffed the air, no doubt checking for the new scent of bread and washed clothing now soiled with sweat.

  As a precaution, Apris hummed. Not wanting to startle the animal, even a slight heads up was better than silence broken.

  But as she neared to within fifteen feet of the animal, it half-whimpered as it sat up on its rear end.

  “It's okay,” she continued the notes of her hummed tune through her words. “I'll help you. You're hurt. I'll help you.”

  Hand trembling, she cupped the skull and held it tight. The magic and power trapped between the small sutures and woven through the ear canals intensified and warmed her palm. She would heal the bear. She would bring it back to health. Just as chipmunks could nuzzle and curl into one another in a den, she would give the bear a soft place to rest.

  “You're in my care,” she sang, light, airy. “You and I have found one another. You crossed a bone witch's door, and I crossed a mountain.”

  Eyes glazed, the grizzly didn't pant as much as her breath came in labored inhales and sharp exhales.

  She slowed, made intentional steps, practically feeling the bear's pulse flowing through her own heart.

  “You and I are bonded now.” But her voice faltered. She wasn't talking to the bear anymore. She was talking to the skeleton within. The bear built of only strength and no blood. The version of the bear which ached to see the sun, but never could.

  A new friend she couldn't yet be with.

  “Sweets, I'm sorry—”

  One quick swipe and the grizzly slashed Apris’ thigh and rose onto its hind legs.

  Apris fell backward. Knowing full well she could never out
run the animal, she scrambled to her feet, then froze.

  With a grumble, the bear lowered down and snorted. Too tired for a fight, but not too tired for fighting.

  Her thigh burned at the fresh gash. She'd dropped the skull somewhere in the leaves and detritus. If not for the bear's sake, she wished she had it for her own injury now.

  She eased backward in small steps. The creature deserved some distance to lessen the defensiveness.

  I tried, Apris thought. All I can do is try.

  When her back smacked into a tulip poplar, she slid down onto her bottom and watched the animal watching her, the trickle of the shallow creek their only music.

  Hours passed as evening stole the sun from them like a reaper stole lives, gradual, then all at once.

  Although she didn't dare move, her stomach rumbled and all thoughts turned to the single slice of bread probably smashed down in her satchel.

  Part of the way through the night, once the peepers stopped serenading the moon's reflection in the steady creek, the bear rose slowly, and carefully crossed the fifteen-foot-wide body of water and entered the woods beyond her home.

  Apris should have left for home then, could have left, but Sweets called in a voice so pure she nearly mistook it for her own.

  This time she kept a distance, but never let the animal out of her sight, which was easy since the bear didn't move with the natural lumber of a healthy female anymore. For a woman of a certain age, the pace suited her fine, stirring within her core the sense that Sweets wanted to be found.

  By noon the following day, she couldn't resist pinching a chunk of bread from the slice and popping it into her mouth. She'd easily gone twenty miles already, maybe more, according to the blisters on her heels.

  The more Sweets called to her, the further from home she walked. A sick sensation dredged up manufactured fears—what if she wasn't following Sweets as much as Sweets was luring her to her own new death?

  No. Leave that thought in the darkness where it was born.

  She had to continue.

  More bread, but only a little. Apris worked her tongue to get enough spit to quench her thirst, but swallowing wasn't the same as drinking.

  The bear hadn't eaten at all, not even a nibble at berries as it brushed by the last fruits of autumn before everything morphed to brown and dried up. In fact, all it did now was limp. The movement was slight at first, then became more pronounced. The injured shoulder had stopped bleeding sometime in the morning hours, but now an unnatural swelling ballooned out the flesh, stretching it taut over the inflammation.

  “I could help you,” she whispered to Sweets as the sun set again on them. “I could fix what has been done to you. I can bring you home again.”

  Fog covered the following morning, coating the world in cold dew. Stiff from sleeping on the ground, Apris was slow to stand and stretch. Then she realized, the bear was gone.

  No.

  She must have been so exhausted she slept through its shifting in the night and Sweets abandoned her. Her stomach twisted, both from hunger and sorrow.

  How could Sweets steal away like that? Without her?

  But then the unmistakable stench of festering skin and ooze wafted over her. Not death, no, it didn't smell like that. More like the acrid sweetness of spent blood and violent microscopic processes of destruction from within.

  Circling where she watched the bear bed down for the night, she scanned the area for a fresh track. Soon, deep paw marks and a more patterned trail began to appear.

  There! Sweets left her a pathway to follow, and so she did.

  In no time, she found herself squatting on the edge of the tree line, watching the bear where she lay in the sun on a rocky plateau overlooking the gorge. Breath slow, not asleep, but not fully awake either. A gelatinous mass of pus trailed from the bullet hole and into the blood-matted brown fur of the bear's arm.

  She could do it. She could heal it now.

  No swiping, no growling. The poor animal was probably in shock at this point anyway. She could work the compassionate magic of a bone witch—finding life in the hardened remnants of collagen and calcium.

  Bread long gone, she reached for the pouch in her satchel and poured out the bobcat teeth into her palm one by one. Each one sharp enough to attack the infection, but smooth-surfaced for easing pain. Squeezing them tightly, she infused the teeth with her intent to heal from crown to root.

  This was her chance. Step forward into the sun. Give the bear back what the hunter tried to steal.

  A distant voice.

  Motherly, gentle.

  Sweets called to be collected. This was the time, if Apris was patient.

  Yet the teeth begged to be used. Urged her to fulfill her duty.

  Her stomach growled.

  How far was she from home? How would she know if she healed the bear in full?

  She stepped to the edge of the plateau without so much as an acknowledgement from the bear. She gazed out over the river nestled into the yawned open forest hundreds of feet below.

  How long would the bear take to die? How much did Sweets weigh once the meat and skin were stripped away?

  Apris settled down beside the weakened beast and took the largest bobcat tooth into her other hand. Draping her burgundy wrap over the animal, she stroked the bear’s massive head where it panted against the stone.

  “I'm here,” she said in a solemn, broken whisper. “I'm here to help you.”

  And she waited, just a little while longer.

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