A Thimble-Sized Soul
written by: Olga Cunha
Artemy was born a large child, but with a tiny soul.
And while his grandmother wailed from her perch on the stove, the guests stared with all forty-one eyes at the baby with the angelic face and a soul no bigger than a thimble.
“Quit gawking,” barked the grandfather, rubbing his crutch at the knee and spitting after his cigarette.
The guests fell silent. After all, Pavel Semenovich was a respected man in the village: he had his own horse and a state award for his lost leg.
Leaning on the threadbare velvet sofa, he rose and solemnly walked over to the cradle with the faint-souled newborn.
“We’ll make a man out of you!” the grandfather wheezed. “With the greatest soul.”
Artemy tugged his grandfather’s beard.
“Agreed, then.”
Artemy grew. His parents worked from dawn till dusk on the farm, while his grandparents quietly withered at the twilight of their blessed lives.
At nine years old, Artemy watched his grandfather lowered into the ground to the sobs of his grandmother and his mother’s laments. And the gawkers at the funeral, with all two hundred and two eyes, stared to see that Artemy’s soul had not grown a whit larger than a thimble, no matter how hard the late Pavel Semenovich had tried.
Without Grandfather, things grew worse still, and Artemy’s soul seemed to shrink even further.
At fourteen, his parents and their eight other mouths, now without Grandmother, sat at the same table with him. Eighteen eyes stared into the table and at calloused, hardened hands, while his mother’s eyes burned with an unfamiliar coldness Artemy had never seen before.
“Shameful,” she said with a heavy sigh. “So many years, and your soul hasn’t grown. Get out.”
The heads of the family bowed even lower.
There was nothing for it. Artemy stood up and walked out the door.
He felt no regret, no anger — such feelings a thimble-sized soul could not contain. But when his little sister Alyonka brought him a bundle of bread and slipped him a gold coin stolen from the church, something fluttered in that tiny soul of his.
“Just my imagination,” Artemy shrugged. “Farewell, Alyonka. Don’t speak ill of me.”
“Come back,” his sister wept faintly. “If your soul grows bigger, come home. Mother and Father will take you back.”
Artemy nodded and walked away, wherever his eyes led him.
He walked a long time, wearing out his only pair of galoshes. He met many people and asked them all, but no one could tell him how to turn a thimble soul into a bottomless well brimming with spring water.
“Fool of a man,” Artemy cursed, kicking the stump he had meant to rest on. “Made me promises by the cartload and then died.”
He sat down on the cursed stump and began to curse his grandfather so fiercely the world had never heard the like—for promising to make a man of him, for leaving him alone and unwanted, and for not sharing his own soul when he died.
***
In truth, Artemy wasn’t a stupid boy; he knew his mathematics and had begun to read books. But in anger one can believe in anything—including that a soul can be inherited.
“I’ll get to you,” Artemy fumed till his face went blue. “You’ll give me what’s mine.”
Without much thought, he picked up a clean stone the size of an ostrich egg, raised it in his right hand, and struck his own temple with all his strength.
He struck—and fell.
Lifeless. Breathless.
Artemy awoke past midnight. Darkness thick as pitch. His head ached, swollen on the right side; his eye seemed nearly shut.
He rubbed his temple, squinted. Nothing. No stars, no moon, no distant lights of a village. At least the wolves weren’t howling.
“It’s all your fault,” Artemy cried into the darkness, and he wept bitterly.
Before he could bury his face in his knees and weep with all his soul, he heard a familiar wheeze nearby.
“Hey!” Artemy leapt up, fists clenched. “Who’s there? Show yourself at once!”
“It’s me,” grumbled his grandfather’s voice. “Calm down and sit, or we’ll lose each other.”
Artemy froze in fright, trembling, and dropped back onto the stump.
“Holy Mother, protect me,” his hands crossed themselves of their own accord, his body swayed side to side. “Our Father, who art in heaven…”
“Useless,” sighed Grandfather. “They don’t hear us here.”
“Where is here?” Artemy asked, still crossing himself.
Grandfather kept silent, rustling at something in the dark.
“Where is here, Grandfather?” Anger welled in Artemy anew, twisting his guts.
“Stop shouting,” Grandfather ordered in a general’s tone. “I don’t know where. I only know this: all who don’t go straight to heaven wait here for God’s judgment. And there are many of us now. The line is endless.”
Artemy froze—and wept again.
Not because he feared God’s judgment, but because he grieved at how foolishly he had thrown away his life: now he had nothing left but his thimble-sized soul.
They sat in silence.
At last Artemy asked, when his anger had burned itself out and boredom crept in:
“And why didn’t you go to heaven? Surely you didn’t deserve anything bad.”
“Me?” Grandfather hesitated. “For believing your grandmother when she said your soul was thimble-sized. She’s been boiling in a cauldron for ages now, but as for me—my case is undecided.”
“What do you mean?” Artemy leapt up again, fists ready.
“They sent her straight to the pot.”
“Not about her!” Artemy’s voice trembled. “What do you mean, you believed my soul was thimble-sized?”
“Ahhh, that,” Grandfather chuckled. “All of us are born with great souls. But they told you yours was small. I believed it, you believed it, everyone believed it. And so we lived with that belief.”
“So my soul…” Artemy began to stammer. “My soul isn’t small. Not small, but large?”
Grandfather said nothing.
“Grandfather,” Artemy’s words echoed in the emptiness. “Grandfather, is my soul large?”
No matter how long Artemy shouted, no matter how he called, no answer came.
He awoke in the morning on the same stump, the bloody stone in his hands, and a vast soul within him.
“So my soul is huge,” Artemy muttered with a smile. “Bigger than any I’ve ever seen.”
- A Thimble-Sized Soul - February 10, 2026
- Dog’s Tale - July 31, 2025
