The Taxidermist’s Stillborn Souls

In the mist-locked village of Grimshaw Fen, where the marshes whispered with the weight of unshed sins, Elodie Vex preserved more than just bodies.

Her shop—The Stillborn Menagerie—was a gallery of perfect, silent creatures: foxes mid-leap, songbirds with beaks parted in eternal song, a stag whose glass eyes held the last light of the forest it once ruled.

But Elodie’s true artistry lay in her special commissions.

Grieving widows brought her locks of hair, and she’d stitch them into the hides of mourning doves that sobbed when touched. Shame-faced men paid her to stuff their vices into rat skins that twitched when the moon was full.

“Nothing truly dies,” she’d murmur as she worked. “It just… changes hands.”

Then came the Stillbirth.

A farmer’s wife smuggled her in a lace-lined shoebox—a tiny, blue-lipped thing that had never drawn breath. Elodie normally refused such work, but the mother’s eyes were too hollow to say no to.

She used dove down for the skin.

Swan feathers for the lashes.

And for the eyes…

Well.

Every taxidermist keeps one pair of real ones in reserve.

When she placed the finished piece in its cradle, the room held its breath. Then—

—the tiny chest rose.

Not with air. With something else.

The doll’s porcelain fingers curled. Its borrowed eyes rolled wetly in their sockets. And from its throat bubbled a sound like a baptism gone wrong.

Elodie reached to destroy it.

The thing smiled.

That night, Grimshaw Fen’s livestock gave birth to stillforms—calf-sized shadows with needle teeth. The church bells rang backwards. And every one of Elodie’s past commissions turned their heads toward the Menagerie.

By dawn, the shop’s door hung open, its shelves picked clean.

The villagers found Elodie at her worktable, her hands still moving even though her chest hadn’t risen in hours.

And in the cradle lay two dolls now—

—one with feathers, one with skin.

Both breathing.

Now, when the marsh fog rolls thick, children swear they see little shapes flitting through the reeds.

And if you listen close to the wind, you might hear it:

The sound of something learning to cry properly.

With lungs.