For Olga (Ludovika) Nødtvedt, a faraway fan and friend
e creation of a novel is more than just the effort of the writer—there are many people involved in bringing a story to fruition, and every single one of them deserves credit for their contribution.
First and foremost, my editor David Gale and associate editor Liz Kossnar, as wel as everyone at Simon & Schuster, who have been, and continue to be amazingly supportive: Justin Chanda, Jon Anderson, Anne Zafian, Katy Hershberger, Michel e Leo, Candace Greene, Krista Vossen, Chrissy Noh, and Katrina Groover to name just a few. Also Chloë Foglia, for what has to be one of my al -time favorite covers!
anks to Barb Sobel, my assistant who runs interference and keeps my life organized; and Matt Lurie, who manages my website and has built my social media presence.
anks to my book agent, Andrea Brown; my foreign rights agent, Taryn Fagerness, my entertainment industry agents, Steve Fisher & Debbie Deuble-Hil at APA; my manager, Trevor Engelson; my contract attorneys Shep Rosenman and Jennifer Justman, as wel as trademark attorneys, Dov Scherzer and Matt Smith.
At the writing of this, Scythe is being developed as a feature film, and I’d like to thank everyone involved, including Jay Ireland at Blue Grass Films, as wel as Sara Scott and Mika Pryce at Universal.
Forever and always, a special thanks to my kids, Brendan, Jarrod, Joel e and Erin—who keep me on my toes, keep me young, and always have thought-provoking comments and suggestions. And, of course, my aunt Mildred Altman, who is going strong at eighty-eight, and has read every single one of my books!
anks everyone! is series promises to be a very exciting journey! I’m glad you’re al a part of it!
ROBE AND RING
We must, by law, keep a record of the innocents we kil .
And as I see it, they’re al innocents. Even the guilty. Everyone is guilty of something, and everyone stil harbors a memory of childhood innocence, no mat er how many layers of life wrap around it. Humanity is innocent; humanity is guilty, and both states are undeniably true.
We must, by law, keep a record.
It begins on day one of apprenticeship—but we do not official y cal it “kil ing.” It’s not social y or moral y correct to cal it such. It is, and has always been, “gleaning,” named for the way the poor would trail behind farmers in ancient times, taking the stray stalks of grain left behind. It was the earliest form of charity. A scythe’s work is the same. Every child is told from the day he or she is old enough to understand that the scythes provide a crucial service for society.
Ours is the closest thing to a sacred mission the modern world knows.
Perhaps that is why we must, by law, keep a record. A public journal, testifying to those who wil never die and those who are yet to be born, as to why we human beings do the things we do. We are instructed to write down not just our deeds but our feelings, because it must be known that we do have feelings. Remorse.
Regret. Sorrow too great to bear. Because if we didn’t feel those things, what monsters would we be?
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
No Dimming of the Sun
e scythe arrived late on a cold November aernoon. Citra was at the dining room table, slaving over a particularly difficult algebra problem, shuffling variables, unable to solve for X or Y, when this new and far more pernicious variable entered her life’s equation.
Guests were frequent at the Terranovas’ apartment, so when the doorbel rang, there was no sense of foreboding—no dimming of the sun, no foreshadowing of the arrival of death at their door. Perhaps the universe should have deigned to provide such warnings, but scythes were no more supernatural than tax col ectors in the grand scheme of things. ey showed up, did their unpleasant business, and were gone.
Her mother answered the door. Citra didn’t see the visitor, as he was, at first, hidden from her view by the door when it opened. What she saw was how her mother stood there, suddenly immobile, as if her veins had solidified within her. As if, were she tipped over, she would fal to the floor and shatter.
“May I enter, Mrs. Terranova?”
e visitor’s tone of voice gave him away. Resonant and inevitable, like the dul tol of an iron bel , confident in the ability of its peal to reach al those who needed reaching. Citra knew before she even saw him that it was a scythe. My god! A scythe has come to our home!
“Yes, yes of course, come in.” Citra’s mother stepped aside to al ow him entry—as if she were the visitor and not the other way around.
He stepped over the threshold, his so slipper-like shoes making no sound on the parquet floor. His multilayered robe was smooth ivory linen, and although it reached so low as to dust the floor, there was not a spot of dirt on it anywhere. A scythe, Citra knew, could choose the color of his or
her robe—every color except for black, for it was considered inappropriate for their job. Black was an absence of light, and scythes were the opposite.
Luminous and enlightened, they were acknowledged as the very best of humanity—which is why they were chosen for the job.
Some scythe robes were bright, some more muted. ey looked like the rich, flowing robes of Renaissance angels, both heavy yet lighter than air.
e unique style of scythes’ robes, regardless of the fabric and color, made them easy to spot in public, which made them easy to avoid—if avoidance was what a person wanted. Just as many were drawn to them.
e color of the robe oen said a lot about a scythe’s personality. is scythe’s ivory robe was pleasant, and far enough from true white not to assault the eye with its brightness. But none of this changed the fact of who and what he was.
He pul ed off his hood to reveal neatly cut gray hair, a mournful face red-cheeked from the chil y day, and dark eyes that seemed themselves almost to be weapons. Citra stood. Not out of respect, but out of fear. Shock. She tried not to hyperventilate. She tried not to let her knees buckle beneath her. ey were betraying her by wobbling, so she forced fortitude to her legs, tightening her muscles. Whatever the scythe’s purpose here, he would not see her crumble.
“You may close the door,” he said to Citra’s mother, who did so, although Citra could see how difficult it was for her. A scythe in the foyer could stil turn around if the door was open. e moment that door was closed, he was truly, truly inside one’s home.
He looked around, spotting Citra immediately. He offered a smile. “Hel o, Citra,” he said. e fact that he knew her name froze her just as solidly as his appearance had frozen her mother.
“Don’t be rude,” her mother said, too quickly. “Say hel o to our guest.”
“Good day, Your Honor.”
“Hi,” said her younger brother, Ben, who had just come to his bedroom door, having heard the deep peal of the scythe’s voice. Ben was barely able to squeak out the one-word greeting. He looked to Citra and to their mother, thinking the same thing they were al thinking. Who has he come for? Wil it be me? Or wil I be le to suffer the loss?
“I smel ed something inviting in the hal way,” the scythe said, breathing in the aroma. “Now I see I was right in thinking it came from this
“Just baked ziti, Your Honor. Nothing special.” Until this moment, Citra had never known her mother to be so timid.
“at’s good,” said the scythe, “because I require nothing special.” en he sat on the sofa and waited patiently for dinner.
Was it too much to believe that the man was here for a meal and nothing more? Aer al , scythes had to eat somewhere. Customarily, restaurants never charged them for food, but that didn’t mean a home-cooked meal was not more desirable. ere were rumors of scythes who required their victims to prepare them a meal before being gleaned. Is that what was happening here?
Whatever his intentions, he kept them to himself, and they had no choice but to give him whatever he wanted. Wil he spare a life here today if the food is to his taste, Citra wondered? No surprise that people bent over backwards to please scythes in every possible way. Hope in the shadow of fear is the world’s most powerful motivator.
Citra’s mother brought him something to drink at his request, and now labored to make sure tonight’s dinner was the finest she had ever served.
Cooking was not her specialty. Usual y she would return home from work just in time to throw something quick together for them. Tonight their lives might just rest on her questionable culinary skil s. And their father? Would he be home in time, or would a gleaning in his family take place in his absence?
As terrified as Citra was, she did not want to leave the scythe alone with his own thoughts, so she went into the living room with him. Ben, who was clearly as fascinated as he was fearful, sat with her.
e man final y introduced himself as Honorable Scythe Faraday.
“I . . . uh . . . did a report on Faraday for school once,” Ben said, his voice cracking only once. “You picked a pretty cool scientist to name yourself aer.”
Scythe Faraday smiled. “I like to think I chose an appropriate Patron Historic. Like many scientists, Michael Faraday was underappreciated in his life, yet our world would not be what it is without him.”
“I think I have you in my scythe card col ection,” Ben went on. “I have almost al the MidMerican scythes—but you were younger in the picture.”
e man seemed perhaps sixty, and although his hair had gone gray, his goatee was stil salt-and-pepper. It was rare for a person to let themselves reach such an age before resetting back to a more youthful self. Citra wondered how old he truly was. How long had he been charged with ending lives?
“Do you look your true age, or are you at the far end of time by choice?”
Citra asked.
“Citra!” Her mother nearly dropped the casserole she had just taken out of the oven. “What a question to ask!”
“I like direct questions,” the scythe said. “ey show an honesty of spirit, so I wil give an honest answer. I admit to having turned the corner four times. My natural age is somewhere near one hundred eighty, although I forget the exact number. Of late I’ve chosen this venerable appearance because I find that those I glean take more comfort from it.” en he laughed. “ey think me wise.”
“Is that why you’re here?” Ben blurted “To glean one of us?”
Scythe Faraday offered an unreadable smile.
“I’m here for dinner.”
• • •
Citra’s father arrived just as dinner was about to be served. Her mom had apparently informed him of the situation, so he was much more emotional y prepared than the rest of them had been. As soon as he entered, he went straight over to Scythe Faraday to shake his hand, and pretended to be far more jovial and inviting than he truly must have been.e meal was awkward—mostly silence punctuated by the occasional comment by the scythe. “You have a lovely home.” “What flavorful lemonade!” “is may be the best baked ziti in al of MidMerica!” Even though everything he said was complimentary, his voice registered like a seismic shock down everyone’s spine.
“I haven’t seen you in the neighborhood,” Citra’s father final y said.
“I don’t suppose you would have,” he answered. “I am not the public figure that some other scythes choose to be. Some scythes prefer the spotlight, but to truly do the job right, it requires a level of anonymity.”
“Right?” Citra bristled at the very idea. “ere’s a right way to glean?”
“Wel ,” he answered, “there are certainly wrong ways,” and said nothing more about it. He just ate his ziti.
As the meal neared its close, he said, “Tel me about yourselves.” It wasn’t a question or a request. It could only be read as a demand. Citra wasn’t sure whether this was part of his little dance of death, or if he was genuinely interested. He knew their names before he entered the apartment, so he probably already knew al the things they could tel him. en why ask?
“I work in historical research,” her father said.
“I’m a food synthesis engineer,” said her mother.
e scythe raised his eyebrows. “And yet you cooked this from scratch.”
She put down her fork. “Al from synthesized ingredients.”
“Yes, but if we can synthesize anything,” he offered, “why do we stil need food synthesis engineers?”
Citra could practical y see the blood drain from her mother’s face. It was her father who rose to defend his wife’s existence. “ere’s always room for improvement.”
“Yeah—and Dad’s work is important, too!” Ben said.
“What, historical research?” e scythe waved his fork dismissing the notion. “e past never changes—and from what I can see, neither does the future.”
While her parents and brother were perplexed and troubled by his comments, Citra understood the point he was making. e growth of civilization was complete. Everyone knew it. When it came to the human race, there was no more le to learn. Nothing about our own existence to decipher. Which meant that no one person was more important than any other. In fact, in the grand scheme of things, everyone was equal y useless.
at’s what he was saying, and it infuriated Citra, because on a certain level, she knew he was right.
Citra was wel known for her temper. It oen arrived before reason, and le only aer the damage was done. Tonight would be no exception.
“Why are you doing this? If you’re here to glean one of us, just get it over with and stop torturing us!”
Her mother gasped, and her father pushed back his chair as if ready to get up and physical y remove her from the room.
“Citra, what are you doing!” Now her mother’s voice was quivering.
“Show respect!”
“No! He’s here, he’s going to do it, so let him do it. It’s not like he hasn’t decided; I’ve heard that scythes always make up their mind before they enter a home, isn’t that right?”
e scythe was unperturbed by her outburst. “Some do, some don’t,” he said gently. “We each have our own way of doing things.”
By now Ben was crying. Dad put his arm around him, but the boy was inconsolable.
“Yes, scythes must glean,” Faraday said, “but we also must eat, and sleep, and have simple conversation.”
Citra grabbed his empty plate away from him. “Wel , the meal’s done, so you can leave.”
en her father approached him. He fel to his knees. Her father was actual y on his knees to this man! “Please, Your Honor, forgive her. I take ful responsibility for her behavior.”
e scythe stood. “An apology isn’t necessary. It’s refreshing to be chal enged. You have no idea how tedious it gets; the pandering, the obsequious flattery, the endless parade of sycophants. A slap in the face is bracing. It reminds me that I’m human.”
en he went to the kitchen and grabbed the largest, sharpest knife he could find. He swished it back and forth, getting a feel for how it cut through the air.
Ben’s wails grew, and his father’s grip tightened on him. e scythe approached their mother. Citra was ready to hurl herself in front of her to block the blade, but instead of swinging the knife, the man held out his other hand.
“Kiss my ring.”
No one was expecting this, least of al Citra.
Citra’s mother stared at him, shaking her head, not wil ing to believe.
“You’re . . . you’re granting me immunity?”
“For your kindness and the meal you served, I grant you one year immunity from gleaning. No scythe may touch you.”
But she hesitated. “Grant it to my children instead.”
Stil the scythe held out his ring to her. It was a diamond the size of his knuckle with a dark core. It was the same ring al scythes wore.
“I am offering it to you, not them.”
“But—”
“Jenny, just do it!” insisted their father.
And so she did. She knelt, kissed his ring, her DNA was read and was transmitted to the Scythedom’s immunity database. In an instant the world knew that Jenny Terranova was safe from gleaning for the next twelve months. e scythe looked to his ring, which now glowed faintly red, indicating that the person before him had immunity from gleaning. He grinned, satisfied.
And final y he told them the truth.
“I’m here to glean your neighbor, Bridget Chadwel ,” Scythe Faraday informed them. “But she was not yet home. And I was hungry.”
He gently touched Ben on the head, as if delivering some sort of benediction. It seemed to calm him. en the scythe moved to the door, the knife stil in his hand, leaving no question as to the method of their neighbor’s gleaning. But before he le, he turned to Citra.
“You see through the facades of the world, Citra Terranova. You’d make a good scythe.”
Citra recoiled. “I’d never want to be one.”
“at,” he said, “is the first requirement.”
en he le to kil their neighbor.
• • •
ey didn’t speak of it that night. No one spoke of gleanings—as if speaking about it might bring it upon them. ere were no sounds from next door.No screams, no pleading wails—or perhaps the Terranovas’ TV was turned up too loud to hear it. at was the first thing Citra’s father did once the scythe le—turn on the TV and blast it to drown out the gleaning on the other side of the wal . But it was unnecessary, because however the scythe accomplished his task, it was done quietly. Citra found herself straining to hear something—anything. Both she and Ben discovered in themselves a morbid curiosity that made them both secretly ashamed.
An hour later, Honorable Scythe Faraday returned. It was Citra who opened the door. His ivory robe held not a single splatter of blood. Perhaps he had a spare one. Perhaps he had used the neighbor’s washing machine aer her gleaning. e knife was clean, too, and he handed it to Citra.
“We don’t want it,” Citra told him, feeling pretty sure she could speak for her parents on the matter. “We’l never use it again.”
“But you must use it,” he insisted, “so that it might remind you.”
“Remind us of what?”
“at a scythe is merely the instrument of death, but it is your hand that swings me. You and your parents, and everyone else in this world are the wielders of scythes.” en he gently put the knife in her hands. “We are al accomplices. You must share the responsibility.”
at may have been true, but aer he was gone Citra stil dropped the knife into the trash.
It is the most difficult thing a person can be asked to do. And knowing that it is for the greater good doesn’t make it any easier.
People used to die natural y. Old age used to be a terminal affliction, not a temporary state. There were invisible kil ers cal ed
“diseases” that broke the body down. Aging couldn’t be reversed, and there were accidents from which there was no return. Planes fel from the sky. Cars actual y crashed. There was pain, misery, despair. It’s hard for most of us to imagine a world so unsafe, with dangers lurking in every unseen, unplanned corner. Al of that is behind us now, and yet a simple truth remains: People have to die.
It’s not as if we can go somewhere else; the disasters on the moon and Mars colonies proved that. We have one very limited world, and although death has been defeated as completely as polio, people stil must die. The ending of human life used to be in the hands of nature. But we stole it. Now we have a monopoly on death. We are its sole distributor.
I understand why there are scythes, and how important and how necessary the work is . . . but I often wonder why I had to be chosen. And if there is some eternal world after this one, what fate awaits a taker of lives?
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
.303 %
Tyger Salazar had hurled himself out a thirty-nine-story window, leaving a terrible mess on the marble plaza below. His own parents were so annoyed by it, they didn’t come to see him. But Rowan did. Rowan Damisch was just that kind of friend.
He sat by Tyger’s bedside in the revival center, waiting for him to awake from speedhealing. Rowan didn’t mind. e revival center was quiet.
Peaceful. It was a nice break from the turmoil of his home, which lately had been fil ed with more relatives than any human being should be expected to endure. Cousins, second cousins, siblings, half-siblings. And now his grandmother had returned home aer turning the corner for a third time, with a new husband and a baby on the way.
“You’re going to have a new aunt, Rowan,” she had announced. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
e whole thing pissed Rowan’s mother off—because this time Grandma had reset al the way down to twenty-five, making her ten years younger than her daughter. Now Mom felt pressured to turn the corner herself, if only to keep up with Grandma. Grandpa was much more sensible. He was off in EuroScandia, charming the ladies and maintaining his age at a respectable thirty-eight.
Rowan, at sixteen, had resolved he would experience gray hair before he turned his first corner—and even then, he wouldn’t reset so far down as to be embarrassing. Some people reset to twenty-one, which was the youngest genetic therapy could take a person. Rumor was, though, that they were working on ways to reset right down into the teens—which Rowan found ridiculous. Why would anyone in their right mind want to be a teenager more than once?
When he glanced back at his friend, Tyger’s eyes were open and studying Rowan.
“Hey,” Rowan said.
“How long?” Tyger asked.
“Four days.”
Tyger pumped his fist in triumph. “Yes! A new record!” He looked at his hands, as if taking stock of the damage. ere was, of course, no damage le.
One did not wake up from speedhealing until there was nothing le to heal.
“Do you think it was jumping from such a high floor that did it, or was it the marble plaza?”
“Probably the marble,” Rowan said. “Once you reach terminal velocity, it doesn’t matter how high you are when you jump.”
“Did I crack it? Did they have to replace the marble?”
“I don’t know, Tyger—jeez, enough already.”
Tyger leaned back into his pil ow, immensely pleased with himself. “Best splat ever!”
Rowan found he had patience to wait for his friend to wake up, but no patience for him now that he was conscious. “Why do you even do it? I mean, it’s such a waste of time.”
Tyger shrugged. “I like the way it feels on the way down. Besides, I gotta remind my parents that the lettuce is there.”
at made Rowan chuckle. It was Rowan who had coined the term
“lettuce-kid” to describe them. Both of them were born sandwiched somewhere in the middle of large families, and were far from being their parents’ favorites. “I got a couple of brothers that are the meat, a few sisters that are cheese and tomatoes, so I guess I’m the lettuce.” e idea caught on, and Rowan had started a club cal ed the Iceberg Heads at school, which now bragged almost two dozen members . . . although Tyger oen teased that he was going to go rogue and start a romaine revolt.
Tyger had started splatting a few months ago. Rowan tried it once, and found it a monumental pain. He ended up behind on al his schoolwork, and his parents levied al forms of punishment—which they promptly forgot to enforce—one of the perks of being the lettuce. Stil , the thril of the drop wasn’t worth the cost. Tyger, on the other hand, had become a splatting junkie.
“You gotta find a new hobby, man,” Rowan told him. “I know the first revival is free, but the rest must be costing your parents a fortune.”
“Yeah . . . and for once they have to spend their money on me.”
“Wouldn’t you rather they buy you a car?”
“Revival is compulsory,” Tyger said. “A car is optional. If they’re not forced to spend it, they won’t.”
Rowan couldn’t argue with that. He didn’t have a car either, and doubted his parents would ever get him one. e publicars were clean, efficient, and drove themselves, his parents had argued. What would be the point in spending good money on something he didn’t need? Meanwhile, they threw money in every direction but his.
“We’re roughage,” Tyger said. “If we don’t cause a little intestinal distress, no one knows we’re there.”
• • •
e fol owing morning, Rowan came face to face with a scythe. It wasn’t unheard of to see a scythe in his neighborhood. You couldn’t help but run into one once in a while—but they didn’t oen show up in a high school.e encounter was Rowan’s fault. Punctuality was not his strong point—
especial y now that he was expected to escort his younger siblings and half-siblings to their school before hopping into a publicar and hurrying to his.
He had just arrived and was heading to the attendance window when the scythe came around a corner, his spotless ivory robe flaring behind him.
Once, when hiking with his family, Rowan had gone off on his own and had encountered a mountain lion. e tight feeling in his chest now, as wel as the weak feeling in his loins, had been exactly the same. Fight or flight, his biology said. But Rowan had done neither. Back then, he had fought those instincts and calmly raised his arms, as he had read to do, making himself look larger. It had worked, and the animal bounded away, saving him a trip to the local revival center.
Now, at the sudden prospect of a scythe before him, Rowan had an odd urge to do the same—as if raising his hands above his head could frighten the scythe away. e thought made him involuntarily laugh out loud. e last thing you want to do is laugh at a scythe.
“Could you direct me to the main office?” the man asked.
Rowan considered giving him directions and heading the opposite way, but decided that was too cowardly. “I’m going there,” Rowan said. “I’l take you.” e man would appreciate helpfulness—and getting on the good side of a scythe couldn’t hurt.
Rowan led the way, passing other kids in the hal —students who, like him, were late, or were just on an errand. ey al gawked and tried to disappear into the wal as he and the scythe passed. Somehow, walking through the hal with a scythe became less frightening when there were others to bear the fear instead—and Rowan couldn’t deny that it was a bit heady to be cast as a scythe’s trailblazer, riding in the cone of such respect. It wasn’t until they reached the office that the truth hit home. e scythe was going to glean one of Rowan’s classmates today.
Everyone in the office stood the moment they saw the scythe, and he wasted no time. “Please have Kohl Whitlock cal ed to the office immediately.”
“Kohl Whitlock?” said the secretary.
e scythe didn’t repeat himself, because he knew she had heard—she just wasn’t wil ing to believe.
“Yes, Your Honor, I’l do it right away.”
Rowan knew Kohl. Hel , everyone knew Kohl Whitlock. Just a junior, he had already risen to be the school’s quarterback. He was going to take them al the way to a league championship for the first time in forever.
e secretary’s voice shook powerful y when she made the cal into the intercom. She coughed as she said his name, choking up.
And the scythe patiently awaited Kohl’s arrival.
e last thing Rowan wanted to do was antagonize a scythe. He should have just slunk off to the attendance window, gotten his readmit, and gone to class. But as with the mountain lion, he just had to stand his ground. It was a moment that would change his life.
“You’re gleaning our star quarterback—I hope you know that.”
e scythe’s demeanor, so cordial a moment before, took a turn toward tombstone. “I can’t see how it’s any of your business.”
“You’re in my school,” Rowan said. “I guess that makes it my business.”
en self-preservation kicked in, and he strode to the attendance window, just out of the scythe’s line of sight. He handed in his forged tardy note, al the while muttering Stupid stupid stupid under his breath. He was lucky he
wasn’t born in a time when death was natural, because he’d probably never survive to adulthood.
As he turned to leave the office, he saw a bleak-eyed Kohl Whitlock being led into the principal’s office by the scythe. e principal voluntarily ejected himself from his own office, then looked to the staff for an explanation, but only received the teary-eyed shaking of their heads.
No one seemed to notice Rowan stil lingering there. Who cared about the lettuce when the beef was being devoured?
He slipped past the principal, who saw him just in time to put a hand on his shoulder. “Son, you don’t want to go in there.”
He was right, Rowan didn’t want to go in there. But he went anyway, closing the door behind him.
ere were two chairs in front of the principal’s wel -organized desk. e scythe sat in one, Kohl in the other, hunched and sobbing. e scythe burned Rowan a glare. e mountain lion, thought Rowan. Only this one actual y had the power to end a human life.
“His parents aren’t here,” Rowan said. “He should have someone with him.”
“Are you family?”
“Does it matter?”
en Kohl raised his head. “Please don’t make Ronald go,” he pleaded.
“It’s Rowan.”
Kohl’s expression shot to higher horror, as if this error somehow sealed the deal. “I knew that! I did! I real y did!” For al his bulk and bravado, Kohl Whitlock was just a scared little kid. Is that what everyone became in the end? Rowan supposed only a scythe could know.
Rather than forcing Rowan to leave, the scythe said, “Grab a chair then.
Make yourself comfortable.”
As Rowan went around to pul out the principal’s desk chair, he wondered if the scythe was being ironic, or sarcastic, or if he didn’t even know that making oneself comfortable was impossible in his presence.
“You can’t do this to me,” Kohl begged. “My parents wil die! ey’l just die!”
“No they won’t,” the scythe corrected. “ey’l live on.”
“Can you at least give him a few minutes to prepare?” Rowan asked.
“Are you tel ing me how to do my job?”
“I’m asking you for some mercy!”
e scythe glared at him again, but this time it was somehow different.
He wasn’t just delivering intimidation, he was extracting something.
Studying something in Rowan. “I’ve done this for many years,” the scythe said. “In my experience, a quick and painless gleaning is the greatest mercy I can show.”
“en at least give him a reason! Tel him why it has to be him!”
“It’s random, Rowan!” Kohl said. “Everyone knows that! It’s just freaking random!”
But there was something in the scythe’s eyes that said otherwise. So Rowan pressed.
“ere’s more to it, isn’t there?”
e scythe sighed. He didn’t have to say anything—he was, aer al , a scythe, above the law in every way. He owed no one an explanation. But he chose to give one anyway.
“Removing old age from the equation, statistics from the Age of Mortality cite 7 percent of deaths as being automobile-related. Of those, 31
percent involved the use of alcohol, and of those, 14 percent were teenagers.”
en he tossed Rowan a smal calculator from the principal’s desk. “Figure it out yourself.”
Rowan took his time crunching the numbers, knowing that every second taken was a second of life he bought for Kohl.
“.303%.” Rowan final y said.
“Which means,” said the scythe, “that about three out of every thousand souls I glean wil fit that profile. One out every three hundred thirty-three.
Your friend here just got a new car and has a record of drinking to excess.
So, of the teens who fit that profile, I made a random choice.”
Kohl buried his head in his hands, his tears intensifying. “I’m such an IDIOT!” He pressed his palms against his eyes as if trying to push them deep within his head.
“So tel me,” the scythe said calmly to Rowan. “Has the explanation eased his gleaning, or made his suffering worse?”
Rowan shrunk a bit in his chair.
“Enough,” said the scythe. “It’s time.” en he produced from a pocket in his robe a smal paddle that was shaped to fit over his hand. It had a cloth back and a shiny metal ic palm. “Kohl, I have chosen for you a shock that
wil induce cardiac arrest. Death wil be quick, painless, and nowhere near as brutal as the car accident you would have suffered in the Age of Mortality.”
Suddenly Kohl thrust his hand out, grabbing Rowan’s and holding it tightly. Rowan al owed it. He wasn’t family; he wasn’t even Kohl’s friend before today—but what was the saying? Death makes the whole world kin.
Rowan wondered if a world without death would then make everyone strangers. He squeezed Kohl’s hand tighter—a silent promise that he wouldn’t let go.
“Is there anything you want me to tel people?” Rowan asked.
“A mil ion things,” said Kohl, “but I can’t think of any of ’em.”
Rowan resolved that he would make up Kohl’s last words to share with his loved ones. And they would be fine words. Comforting ones. Rowan would find a way to make sense of the senseless.
“I’m afraid you’l have to let go of his hand for the procedure,” the scythe said.“No,” Rowan told him.
“e shock could stop your heart, too,” the scythe warned.
“So what?” said Rowan. “ey’l revive me.” en he added, “Unless you’ve decided to glean me, too.”
Rowan was aware that he had just dared a scythe to kil him. In spite of the risk, he was glad he had done it.
“Very wel .” And without waiting an instant longer, the scythe pressed the paddle to Kohl’s chest.
Rowan’s vision went white, then dark. His entire body convulsed. He flew backwards out of his chair and hit the wal behind him. It might have been painless for Kohl, but not for Rowan. It hurt. It hurt more than anything—
more pain than a person is supposed to feel—but then the microscopic painkil ing nanites in his blood released their numbing opiates. e pain subsided as those opiates took effect, and when his vision cleared, he saw Kohl slumped in his chair and the scythe reaching over to close his sightless eyes. e gleaning was complete. Kohl Whitlock was dead.
e scythe stood and reached out to offer Rowan his hand, but Rowan didn’t take it. He rose from the floor on his own, and although Rowan felt not an ounce of gratitude, he said, “ank you for letting me stay.”
e scythe regarded him a little too long, then said, “You stood your ground for a boy you barely knew. You comforted him at the moment of his
death, bearing the pain of the jolt. You bore witness, even though no one cal ed you to do so.”
Rowan shrugged. “I did what anyone would do.”
“Did anyone else offer?” the scythe put to him. “Your principal? e office staff? Any of the dozen students we passed in the hal ?”
“No . . . ,” Rowan had to admit. “But what does it matter what I did? He’s stil dead. And you know what they say about good intentions.”
e scythe nodded, and glanced down at his ring, sitting so fat on his finger. “I suppose now you’l ask me for immunity.”
Rowan shook his head. “I don’t want anything from you.”
“Fair enough.” e scythe turned to go, but hesitated before he opened the door. “Be warned that you wil not receive kindness from anyone but me for what you did here today,” he said. “But remember that good intentions pave many roads. Not al of them lead to hel .”
• • •
e slap was just as jarring as the electric shock—even more so because Rowan wasn’t expecting it. It came just before lunch, as he was standing at his locker, and flew in with such force it knocked him back, making the row of lockers resound like a steel drum.“You were there and you didn’t stop it!” Marah Pavlik’s eyes flared with grief and righteous indignation. She looked ready to reach up his nostrils with her long nails and extract his brain. “You just let him die!”
Marah had been Kohl’s girlfriend for over a year. Like Kohl, she was a highly popular junior, and as such would actively avoid any interaction with sophomore rabble such as Rowan. But these were extraordinary circumstances.
“It wasn’t like that,” Rowan managed to blurt out before she swung again.
is time he deflected her hand. She broke a nail but didn’t seem to care. If nothing else, Kohl’s gleaning had given her perspective.
“It was exactly like that! You went in there to watch him die!”
Others had begun to gather, drawn, as most are, to the scent of conflict.
He looked to the crowd for a sympathetic face—someone who might take his side—but al he saw in the faces of his classmates was communal disdain.
Marah was speaking, and slapping, for al of them.
is is not what Rowan had expected. Not that he wanted pats on the back for coming to Kohl’s aid in his last moments—but he wasn’t expecting such an unthinkable accusation.
“What, are you nuts?” Rowan shouted at her—at al of them. “You can’t stop a scythe from gleaning!”
“I don’t care!” she wailed. “You could have done something, but al you did was watch!”
“I did do something! I . . . I held his hand.”
She slammed him back into the locker with more strength that he thought she could possibly have. “You’re lying! He’d never hold your hand.
He’d never touch any part of you!” And then, “I should have held his hand!”
Around them the other kids scowled, and whispered things that they clearly wanted him to hear.
“I saw him walking in the hal with the scythe like they were best buddies.”
“ey came into school together this morning.”
“I heard he gave the scythe Kohl’s name.”
“Someone told me he actual y helped.”
He stormed to the obnoxious kid who made the last accusation—Ralphy something or other. “Heard from who? No one else was in the room, you moron!”
But it didn’t matter. Rumors adhered to no logic but their own.
“Don’t you get it? I didn’t help the scythe, I helped Kohl!” Rowan insisted.
“Yeah, helped him into the grave,” someone said, and everyone else grumbled in agreement.
It was no use—he had been tried and convicted—and the more he denied it, the more convinced they’d be of his guilt. ey didn’t need his act of courage; what they needed was someone to blame. Someone to hate. ey couldn’t take their wrath out on the scythe, but Rowan Damisch was the perfect candidate.
“I’l bet he got immunity for helping,” a kid said—a kid who’d always been his friend.
“I didn’t!”
“Good,” said Marah with absolute contempt. “en I hope the next scythe comes for you.”
He knew she meant it—not just in the moment, but forever—and if the next scythe did come for him, she would relish the knowledge of his death.
It was a darkly sobering thought, that there were now people in this world who actively wished him dead. It was one thing not to be noticed. It was something else entirely to be the repository of an entire school’s enmity.
Only then did the scythe’s warning come back to him: that he would receive no kindness for what he had done for Kohl. e man had been right
—and he hated the scythe for it, just as the others hated Rowan.
2042. It’s a year that every schoolchild knows. It was the year where computational power became infinite—or so close to infinite that it could no longer be measured. It was the year we knew. . .
everything. “The cloud” evolved into “the Thunderhead,” and now al there is to know about everything resides in the near-infinite memory of the Thunderhead for anyone who wants to access it.
But like so many things, once we had possession of infinite knowledge, it suddenly seemed less important. Less urgent. Yes, we know everything, but I often wonder if anyone bothers to look at al that knowledge. There are academics, of course, who study what we already know, but to what end? The very idea of schooling used to be about learning so that we could improve our lives and the world. But a perfect world needs no improvement. Like most everything else we do, education, from grade school through the highest of universities, is just a way to keep us busy.
2042 is the year we conquered death, and also the year we stopped counting. Sure, we stil numbered years for a few more decades, but at the moment of immortality, passing time ceased to mat er.
I don’t know exactly when things switched over to the Chinese calendar—Year of the Dog, Year of the Goat, the Dragon, and so on. And I can’t exactly say when animal activists around the world began cal ing for equal bil ing for their own favorite species, adding in Year of the Ot er, and the Whale, and the Penguin. And I couldn’t tel you when they stopped repeating, and when it was decreed that every year henceforth would be named after a different species. Al I know for sure is that this is the Year of the Ocelot.
As for the things I don’t know, I’m sure they’re al up there in the Thunderhead for anyone with the motivation to look.
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
The Force of Destiny
e invitation came to Citra in early January. It arrived by post—which was the first indication that it was out of the ordinary. ere were only three types of communications that arrived by post: packages, official business, or letters from the eccentric—the only type of people who stil wrote letters.
is appeared to be of the third variety.
“Wel , open it,” Ben said, more excited by the envelope than Citra was. It had been handwritten, making it even odder. True, handwriting was stil offered as an elective, but, aside from herself, she knew few people who had taken it. She tore the envelope open and pul ed out a card that was the same eggshel color as the envelope, then read to herself before reading it aloud.
e pleasure of your company is requested at the Grand Civic Opera, January ninth, seven p.m.
ere was no signature, no return address. ere was, however, a single ticket in the envelope.
“e opera?” said Ben. “Ew.”
Citra couldn’t agree more.
“Could it be some sort of school event?” their mother asked.
Citra shook her head. “If it was, it would say so.”
She took the invitation and envelope from Citra to study them herself.
“Wel , whatever it is, it sounds interesting.”
“It’s probably some loser’s way of asking me on a date because he’s too afraid to ask me to my face.”
“Do you think you’l go?” her mother asked.
“Mom . . . a boy who invites me to the opera is either joking or delusional.”
“Or he’s trying to impress you.”
Citra grunted and le the room, annoyed by her own curiosity. “I’m not going!” she cal ed out from her room, knowing ful wel that she would.
• • •
e Grand Civic Opera was one of several places where anyone who was anyone went to be seen. At any given performance, only half the patrons were there for the actual opera. e rest were there to participate in the great melodrama of social climbing and career advancement. Even Citra, who moved in none of those circles, knew the dril .She wore the dress she had bought for the previous year’s homecoming dance, when she was sure that Hunter Morrison would invite her. Instead, Hunter had invited Zachary Swain, which apparently everyone but Citra knew would happen. ey were stil a couple, and Citra, until today, hadn’t had any use for the dress.
When she put it on, she was far more pleased with it than she thought she’d be. Teenage girls change in a year, but now the dress—which was more about wishful thinking last year—actual y fit her perfectly.
In her mind, she had narrowed down the possibilities of her secret admirer. It could be one of five, only two of whom she would enjoy spending an evening alone with. e other three she would endure for the sake of novelty. ere was, aer al , some fun to be had spending an evening pretending to be pretentious.
Her father insisted on dropping her off. “Cal when you’re ready to be picked up.”
“I’l take a publicar home.”
“Cal anyway,” he said. He told her she looked beautiful for the tenth time, then she got out and he drove off to make room for the limousines and Bentleys in the drop-off queue. She took a deep breath and went up the marble steps, feeling as awkward and out of place as Cinderel a at the bal .
Upon entering, she was not directed toward either the orchestra or the central staircase leading to the balcony. Instead, the usher looked at the ticket, looked at her, then looked at the ticket again before cal ing over a second usher to personal y escort her.
“What’s al this about?” she asked. Her first thought was that it was a forged ticket and she was being escorted to the exit. Perhaps it had been a
joke aer al , and she was already running a list of suspects through her mind.
But then the second usher said, “A personal escort is customary for a box seat, miss.”
Box seats, Citra recal ed, were the ultimate in exclusivity. ey were usual y reserved for people too elite to sit among the masses. Normal people couldn’t afford them, and even if they could, they weren’t al owed access. As she fol owed the usher up the narrow stairs to the le boxes, Citra began to get scared. She knew no one with that kind of money. What if this invitation came to her by mistake? Or if there actual y was some sort of big, important person waiting for Citra, what on earth were his or her intentions?
“Here we are!” e usher pul ed back the curtain of the box to reveal a boy her age already sitting there. He had dark hair and light freckled skin.
He stood up when he saw her, and Citra could see that his suit revealed a little too much of his socks.
“Hi.”
“Hel o.”
And the usher le them alone.
“I le you the seat closer to the stage,” he said.
“anks.” She sat down, trying to figure out who this was and why he had invited her here. He didn’t appear familiar. Should she know him? She didn’t want to let on that she didn’t recognize him.
en out of nowhere, he said, “ank you.”
“For what?”
He held up an invitation that looked exactly like hers. “I’m not much into opera, but hey, it’s better than doing nothing at home. So . . . should I, like, know you?”
Citra laughed out loud. She didn’t have a mysterious admirer; it appeared they both had a mysterious matchmaker, which set Citra working on another mental list—at the top of which were her own parents. Perhaps this was the son of one of their friends—but this kind of subterfuge was pretty obtuse, even for them.
“What’s so funny?” the boy asked, and she showed him her identical invitation. It didn’t make him laugh. Instead he seemed a bit troubled, but didn’t share why.
He introduced himself as Rowan, and they shook hands just as the lights dimmed, the curtain went up, and the music exploded too lush and loud for them to be able to hold a conversation. e opera was Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, e Force of Destiny, but it clearly wasn’t destiny that had hurled these two together; it was a very deliberate hand.
e music was rich and pretty, until it became too much for Citra’s ears.
And the story, while easy to fol ow even without a knowledge of Italian, had little resonance for either of them. It was, aer al , a work from the Age of Mortality. War, vengeance, murder—al the themes on which the tale was strung—were so removed from modern reality, few could relate. Catharsis could only gather around the theme of love, which, considering that they were strangers trapped in an opera box, was far more uncomfortable than cathartic.
“So, who do you think invited us?” Citra asked as soon as the lights came up for the first act intermission. Rowan had no more clue than she did, so they shared whatever they could that might help them generate a theory.
Aside from them both being sixteen, they had very little in common. She was from the city, he the suburbs. She had a smal family, his was large, and their parents’ professions couldn’t have been further apart.
“What’s your genetic index?” he asked—a rather personal question, but perhaps it could have some relevance.
“22-37-12-14-15.”
He smiled. “irty-seven percent Afric descent. Good for you! at’s pretty high!”
“anks.”
He told her that his was 33-13-12-22-20. She thought to ask him if he knew the subindex of his “other” component, because 20 percent was pretty high, but if he didn’t know, the question would embarrass him.
“We both have 12 percent PanAsian ancestry,” he pointed out. “Could that have something to do with it?” But he was grasping at straws—it was merely coincidence.
en, toward the end of intermission, the answer stepped into the box behind them.
“Good to see you’re getting acquainted.”
Although it had been a few months since their encounter, Citra recognized him immediately. Honorable Scythe Faraday was not a figure
“You?” Rowan said with such severity, it was clear that he had a history with the scythe as wel .
“I would have arrived sooner, but I had . . . other business.” He didn’t elaborate, for which Citra was glad. Stil , his presence here could not be a good thing.
“You invited us here to glean us.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement of fact, because Citra was convinced it was true—until Rowan said, “I don’t think that’s what this is about.”
Scythe Faraday did not make any move to end their lives. Instead, he grabbed an empty chair and sat beside them. “I was given this box by the theater director. People always think making offerings to scythes wil prevent them from being gleaned. I had no intention of gleaning her, but now she thinks her gi played a part.”
“People believe what they want to believe,” Rowan said, with a sort of authority that told Citra he knew the truth of it.
Faraday gestured toward the stage. “Tonight we witness the spectacle of human fol y and tragedy,” he said. “Tomorrow, we shal live it.”
e curtain went up on the second act before he could explain his meaning.
• • •
For two months, Rowan had been the school pariah—an outcast of the highest order. Although that sort of thing usual y ran its course and diminished over time, it was not the case when it came to the gleaning of Kohl Whitlock. Every footbal game rubbed a healthy dose of salt in the communal wound—and since al of those games were lost, it doubled the pain. Rowan was never particularly popular, nor was he ever the target of derision before, but now he was cornered and beaten on a regular basis. He was shunned, and even his friends actively avoided him. Tyger was no exception.“Guilt by association, man,” Tyger had said. “I feel your pain, but I don’t want to live it.”
“It’s an unfortunate situation,” the principal told Rowan when he turned up in the nurse’s office, waiting out during lunch for some newly inflicted
bruises to heal. “You may want to consider switching schools.”
en one day, Rowan gave in to the pressure. He stood on a table in the cafeteria and told everyone the lies they wanted to hear.
“at scythe was my uncle,” he proclaimed. “I told him to glean Kohl Whitlock.”
Of course they believed every word of it. Kids began to boo and throw food at him, until he said:
“I want you al to know that my uncle’s coming back—and he asked me to choose who gets gleaned next.”
Suddenly the food stopped flying, the glares ceased, and the beatings miraculously stopped. What fil ed the void was . . . wel . . . a void. Not a single eye would meet his anymore. Not even his teachers would look at him
—a few actual y started giving him As when he was doing B and C work. He began to feel like a ghost in his own life, existing in a forced blind spot of the world.
At home things were normal. His stepfather stayed entirely out of his business, and his mother was preoccupied with too many other things to give much attention to his troubles. ey knew what had happened at school, and what was happening now, but they dismissed it in that self-serving way parents oen had of pretending anything they can’t solve is not real y a problem.
“I want to transfer to a different high school,” he told his mother, final y taking his principal’s advice, and her response was achingly neutral.
“If you think that’s best.”
He was half convinced if he told her he was dropping out of society and joining a tone cult, she’d say, If you think that’s best.
So when the opera invitation arrived, he hadn’t cared who sent it.
Whatever it meant, it was salvation—at least for an evening.
e girl he met in the box seat was nice enough. Pretty, confident—the kind of girl who probably already had a boyfriend, although she never mentioned one. en the scythe showed up and Rowan’s world shied back into a dark place. is was the man responsible for his misery. If he could have gotten away with it, Rowan would have pushed him over the railing—
but attacks against scythes were not tolerated. e punishment was the gleaning of the offender’s entire family. It was a consequence that ensured the safety of the revered bringers of death.
At the close of the opera, Scythe Faraday gave them a card and very clear instructions.
“You wil meet me at this address tomorrow morning, precisely at nine.”
“What should we tel our parents about tonight?” Citra asked. Apparently she had parents who might care.
“Tel them whatever you like. It doesn’t matter, as long as you’re there tomorrow morning.”
• • •
e address turned out to be the Museum of World Art, the finest museum in the city. It didn’t open until ten, but the moment the security guard saw a scythe coming up the steps of the main entrance, he unlocked the doors and let the three of them in without even having to be asked.“More perks of the position,” Scythe Faraday told them.
ey strol ed through gal eries of the old masters in silence, punctuated only by the sound of their footfal s and the scythe’s occasional commentaries. “See how El Greco uses contrast to evoke emotional yearning.” “Look at the fluidity of motion in this Raphael—how it brings intensity to the visual story he tel s.” “Ah! Seurat! Prophetic pointil ism a century before the pixel!”
Rowan was the first to ask the necessary question.
“What does any of this have to do with us?”
Scythe Faraday sighed in mild irritation, although he probably anticipated the question. “I am supplying you with lessons you won’t receive in school.”
“So,” said Citra, “you pul ed us out of our lives for some random art lesson? Isn’t that a waste of your valuable time?”
e scythe laughed, and Rowan found himself wishing he had been the one to make him laugh.
“What have you learned so far?” Scythe Faraday asked.
Neither had a response, so he asked a different question.
“What do you think our conversation would have been like had I brought you to the post-mortality gal eries instead of these older ones?”
Rowan ventured an answer. “Probably about how much easier on the eye post-mortal art is. “Easier and . . . untroubled.”
“How about uninspired?” prompted the scythe.
“at’s a matter of opinion,” said Citra.
“Perhaps. But now that you know what you’re looking for in this art of the dying, I want you to try to feel it.” And he led them to the next gal ery.
Although Rowan was sure he’d feel nothing, he was wrong.
e next room was a large gal ery with paintings hanging floor to ceiling.
He didn’t recognize the artists, but that didn’t matter. ere was a coherence to the work, as if it had been painted by the same soul, if not the same hand.
Some works had a religious theme, others were portraits, and others simply captured the elusive light of daily life with a vibrancy that was missing in post-mortal art. Longing and elation, anguish and joy—they were al there, sometimes commingling in the same canvas. It was in some ways unsettling, but compel ing as wel .
“Can we stay in this room a little longer?” Rowan asked, which made the scythe smile.
“Of course we can.”
e museum had opened by the time they were done. Other patrons gave them a wide berth. It reminded Rowan of the way they treated him in school. Citra stil seemed to have no clue why Scythe Faraday had cal ed them—but Rowan was beginning to have an idea.
He took the kids to a diner, where the waitress sat them immediately and brought them menus, ignoring other customers to give them priority. Perk of the position. Rowan noticed that no one came in once they were seated.
e restaurant would probably be empty by the time they le.
“If you want us to provide you with information on people we know,”
Citra said, as her food came, “I’m not interested.”
“I gather my own information,” Scythe Faraday told her. “I don’t need a couple of kids to be my informants.”
“But you do need us, don’t you?” Rowan said.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he talked about world population and the task of the world’s scythes, if not to level it, then to wrangle it to a reasonable ratio.
“e ratio of population growth to the underhead’s ability to provide for humanity requires that a certain number of people be gleaned each year,”
he told them. “For that to happen, we’re going to need more scythes.”
en he produced from one of the many pockets hidden in his robe a scythe’s ring identical to the one he already wore. It caught the light in the room, reflecting it, refracting it, but never bending light into the heart of its dark core.
“ree times a year, scythes meet at a great assembly cal ed a conclave.
We discuss the business of gleaning, and whether or not more scythes are needed in our region.”
Citra now seemed to shrink in her chair. She final y got it. Although Rowan had suspected this, to actual y see the ring made him shrink a bit, too.“e gems on scythe rings were made in those first post-mortal days by the early scythes,” Faraday said, “when society deemed that unnatural death needed to take the place of natural death. ere were many more gems made than were needed at the time, for the founders of the Scythedom were wise enough to anticipate a need. When a new scythe is required, a gem is placed into a gold setting and is bestowed upon the chosen candidate.” He turned the ring in his fingers, pondering it, sending refracted light dancing around the room. en he looked them in the eye—first Citra, then Rowan. “I just returned from Winter Conclave and have been given this ring so that I might take on an apprentice.”
Citra backed away. “Rowan can do it. I’m not interested.”
Rowan turned to her, wishing he had spoken. “What makes you think I am?”
“I have chosen both of you!” Faraday said, raising his voice. “You wil both learn the trade. But in the end, only one of you wil receive the ring.
e other may return home to his or her old life.”
“Why would we compete for something that neither of us wants?” Citra asked.
“erein lies the paradox of the profession,” Faraday said. “ose who wish to have the job should not have it . . . and those who would most refuse to kil are the only ones who should.”
He put the ring away, and Rowan let out his breath, not even realizing he had been holding it.
“You are both made of the highest moral fiber,” Faraday told them, “and I believe the high ground on which you stand wil compel you into my apprenticeship—not because I force it upon you, but because you choose it.”
en he le without paying the bil , because no bil was, or would ever be, brought to a scythe.
• • •
e nerve! To think he could impress them with airs of culture, and then reel them into his sick little scheme. ere was no way Citra would ever, under any circumstances, throw away her life by becoming a taker of other people’s lives.She told her parents what had happened when they got home that evening. Her father embraced her and she cried into his arms for being given the terrible proposition. en her mother said something that Citra was not expecting.
“Wil you do it?” she asked.
e fact that she could even ask that question was more of a shock than seeing the ring held out to her that morning.
“What?”
“It’s a difficult choice, I know,” her father said. “We’l support you either way.”
She looked at them as if she had never truly seen them before that moment. How could her parents know her so little that they would think she’d become a scythe’s apprentice? She didn’t even know what to say to them.
“Would you . . . want me to?” She found herself terrified of their answer.
“We want what you want, honey,” her mother said. “But look at it in perspective: A scythe wants for nothing in this world. Al of your needs and desires would be met, and you’d never have to fear being gleaned.”
And then something occurred to Citra. “You’d never have worry about being gleaned either. . . . A scythe’s family is immune from gleaning for as long as that scythe’s alive.”
Her father shook his head. “It’s not about our immunity.”
And she realized he was tel ing the truth. “It’s not about yours . . . it’s about Ben’s . . . ,” Citra said.
To that, they didn’t have an answer. e memory of Scythe Faraday’s unexpected intrusion into their home was stil a dark specter haunting them. At the time, they hadn’t known why he was there. He could very wel
have been there to glean Citra or Ben. But if Citra became a scythe, they never needed to fear an unexpected visitor again.
“You want me to spend my life kil ing people?”
Her mother looked away. “Please, Citra, it’s not kil ing, it’s gleaning. It’s important. It’s necessary. Sure, nobody likes it, but everyone agrees it has to happen and that someone has to do it. Why not you?”
Citra went to bed early that night, before supper, because her appetite was a casualty of the day. Her parents came to her door several times, but she told them to go away.
She had never been sure what path her life would take. She assumed she would go to col ege, get a degree in something pleasant, then settle into a comfortable job, meet a comfortable guy, and have a nice, unremarkable life.
It’s not that she longed for such an existence, but it was expected. Not just of her, but of everyone. With nothing to real y aspire to, life had become about maintenance. Eternal maintenance.
Could she possibly find greater purpose in the gleaning of human life?
e answer was stil a resolute “No!”
But if that were the case, then why did she find it so hard to sleep?
• • •
For Rowan, the decision wasn’t quite so difficult. Yes, he hated the thought of being a scythe—it sickened him—but what sickened him more was the thought of just about anyone else he knew doing it. He didn’t see himself as moral y superior to anyone—but he did have a keener sense of empathy. He felt for people, sometimes more than he felt for himself. It’s what drove him into Kohl’s gleaning. It’s what brought him to Tyger’s side each and every time he splat.And Rowan already knew what it was like to be a scythe—to be treated separate and apart from the rest of the world. He was living that now, but could he bear to live it forever? Maybe he wouldn’t have to. Scythes got together, didn’t they? ey had conclaves three times a year and must befriend one another. It was the world’s most elite club. No, he didn’t want to be a part of it, but he had been cal ed to it. It would be a burden, but also the ultimate honor.
He didn’t tel his family that day, because he didn’t want them to sway his decision. Immunity for al of them? Of course they’d want him to accept. He was loved, but only as one among a group of other beloved things. If his sacrifice could save the rest, the greater familial good would be served.
In the end it was the art that did it. e canvases haunted his dreams that night. What must life have been like in the Age of Mortality? Ful of passions, both good and bad. Fear giving rise to faith. Despair giving meaning to elation. ey say even the winters were colder and the summers were warmer in those days.
To live between the prospects of an unknown eternal sky and a dark, enveloping Earth must have been glorious—for how else could it have given rise to such magnificent expression? No one created anything of value anymore—but if, by gleaning, he could bring back a hint of what once was, it might be worth it.
Could he find it in himself to kil another human being? Not just one, but many, day aer day, year aer year, until he reached his own eternity? Scythe Faraday believed he could.
e fol owing morning, before he le for school, he told his mother that a scythe had invited him to become his apprentice and that he’d be dropping out of school to accept the position.
“If you think that’s best,” she said.
I had my cultural audit today. It happens only once a year, but it’s never any less stressful. This year, when they crunched each cultural index from those I gleaned over the past twelve months, I, thankful y, came up wel within accepted parameters: 20 percent Caucasoid
18 percent Afric
20 percent PanAsian
19 percent Mesolatino
23 percent Other
Sometimes it’s hard to know. A person’s index is considered private, so we can only go by visible traits, which are no longer as obvious as they had been in past generations. When scythes’
numbers become lopsided, they are disciplined by the High Blade, and are assigned their gleanings for the next year rather than being al owed to choose for themselves. It is a sign of shame.
The index is supposed to keep the world free from cultural and genetic bias, but aren’t there underlying factors that we can’t escape? For instance, who decided that the first number of one’s genetic index would be Caucasoid?
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
Learner’s Permit to Kil
Forget what you think you know about scythes. Leave behind your preconceived notions. Your education begins today.
Citra could not believe she was actual y going through with this. What secret, self-destructive part of herself had asserted its wil over her? What had possessed her to accept the apprenticeship? Now there was no backing out. Yesterday—on the third day of the new year—Scythe Faraday had come to her apartment and had given a year’s immunity to her father and brother.
He added several months to her mother’s so their immunity would al expire at the same time. Of course, if Citra was chosen to be a ful scythe, their immunity would become permanent.
Her parents were tearful when she le. Citra wondered whether they were tears of sorrow, joy, or relief. Perhaps a combination of al three.
“We know you’l do great things in this world,” her father had said. And she wondered what about bringing death could be considered great.
Do not be so arrogant as to think you have a license to glean. e license is mine and mine alone. At most you have . . . shal we say . . . a learner’s permit.
I wil , however, require at least one of you to be present at each of my gleanings. And if I ask you to assist, you wil .
Citra unceremoniously withdrew from school and said good-bye to friends in awkward little conversations.
“It’s not like I won’t be around, I just won’t be at school anymore.” But who was she kidding? Accepting this apprenticeship put her on the outside of an impenetrable wal . It was both demoralizing yet heartening to know that life would go on without her. And it occurred to her that being a scythe was like being the living dead. In the world, but apart from it. Just a witness to the comings and goings of others.
We are above the law, but that does not mean we live in defiance of it. Our position demands a level of morality beyond the rule of law. We must strive for incorruptibility, and must assess our motives on a daily basis.
While she did not wear a ring, Citra was given an armband to identify her as a scythe’s apprentice. Rowan had one, too—bright green bands bearing the curved blade of a farmer’s scythe above an unblinking eye—the double symbol of the scythehood. at symbol would become a tattoo on the arm of the chosen apprentice. Not that anyone would ever see the tattoo, for scythes are never seen in public without their robes.
Citra had to tel herself that there was an out. She could fail to perform.
She could be a lousy apprentice. She could sabotage herself so completely that Honorable Scythe Faraday would be forced to choose Rowan and return her to her family at the end of the year. e problem was that Citra was very bad at doing things half-fast. It would be much harder for her to fail than to succeed.
I wil not tolerate any romantic notions between the two of you, so banish the thought from your mind now.
Citra had looked over at Rowan when the scythe said that, and Rowan had shrugged.
“Not a problem,” he said, which irritated Citra. At the very least he could have voiced some minor disappointment.
“Yeah,” Citra said. “No hope of that, with or without the rule.”
Rowan had just grinned at that, which had made her even more annoyed.
You shal study history, the great philosophers, the sciences. You wil come to understand the nature of life and what it means to be human before you are permanently charged with the taking of life. You wil also study al forms of kil cra and become experts.
Like Citra, Rowan found himself unsettled by his decision to take this on, but he was not going to show it. Especial y not to Citra. And in spite of the blasé attitude he showed her, he was, in fact, attracted to her. But he knew even before the scythe forbade them that such a pursuit could not end wel .
ey were adversaries, aer al .
Like Citra, Rowan had stood beside Scythe Faraday as the man held out his ring to each member of his family, offering them immunity. His brothers, sisters, half-siblings, grandma, and her al -too-perfect husband, who Rowan suspected might actual y be a bot. Each in turn knelt respectful y and kissed
the ring, transmitting their DNA to the worldwide immunity database in the Scythedom’s own special cloud separate and apart from the underhead.
e rule was that al members of an apprentice’s household would receive immunity for one year, and there were nineteen people in Rowan’s sprawling household. His mother had mixed feelings, because now no one would move out for at least a year, to make sure their immunity would become permanent once Rowan received his scythe’s ring— if he got the ring.
e only glitch had been when the ring vibrated, giving off a little alarm, refusing immunity to his grandmother’s new husband because he was a bot aer al .
You shal live as I do. Modestly, and subsisting on the goodwil of others.
You wil take no more than you need, and waste nothing. People wil attempt to buy your friendship. ey wil lavish things upon you. Accept nothing but the barest of human necessities.
Faraday had brought Rowan and Citra to his home to begin their new lives. It was a smal bungalow in a rundown part of the city that Rowan hadn’t even known existed. “People playing at poverty,” he had told them, because no one was impoverished anymore. Austerity was a choice, for there were always those who shunned the plenty of the post-mortal world.
Faraday’s home was Spartan. Little decoration. Unimpressive furniture.
Rowan’s room had space for only a bed and a smal dresser. Citra, at least, had a window, but the view was of a brick wal .
I wil not tolerate childish pastimes or vapid communications with friends.
Commitment to this life means leaving behind your old life as ful y as possible.
When, a year from now, I choose between you, the unchosen one can return to his or her former life easily enough. But for now, consider that life a part of your past.
Once they were settled in, he didn’t al ow them to brood over their circumstances. As soon as Rowan had unpacked his bags, the scythe announced that they were going to the market.
“To glean?” Rowan asked, more than a little sick at the prospect.
“No, to get food for the two of you,” Faraday told them. “Unless you’d prefer to eat my leovers.”
Citra smirked at Rowan for asking—as if she hadn’t been worrying about that herself.
“I liked you a lot more before I knew you,” he told her.
“You stil don’t know me,” she answered, which was true. en she sighed, and for the first time since their night at the opera, she offered up something more than attitude. “We’re being forced to live together and forced to compete at something neither of us wants to compete over. I know it’s not your fault, but it doesn’t exactly put us in a friendly place.”
“I know,” Rowan admitted. Aer al , Citra didn’t own al the tension between them. “But that stil doesn’t mean we can’t have each other’s backs.”
She didn’t answer him. He didn’t expect her to. It was just a seed he wanted to plant. Over the past two months he had learned that no one had his back anymore. Perhaps no one ever did. His friends had pul ed away. He was a footnote in his own family. ere was only one person now who shared his plight. at was Citra. If they couldn’t find a way to trust each other, then what did they have beyond a learner’s permit to kil ?
The greatest achievement of the human race was not conquering death. It was ending government.
Back in the days when the world’s digital network was cal ed
“the cloud,” people thought giving too much power to an artificial intel igence would be a very bad idea. Cautionary tales abounded in every form of media. The machines were always the enemy. But then the cloud evolved into the Thunderhead, sparking with consciousness, or at least a remarkable facsimile. In stark contrast to people’s fears, the Thunderhead did not seize power. Instead, it was people who came to realize that it was far bet er suited to run things than politicians.
In those days before the Thunderhead, human arrogance, self-interest, and endless in-fighting determined the rule of law.
Inefficient. Imperfect. Vulnerable to al forms of corruption.
But the Thunderhead was incorruptible. Not only that, but its algorithms were built on the ful sum of human knowledge. Al the time and money wasted on political posturing, the lives lost in wars, the populations abused by despots—al gone the moment the Thunderhead was handed power. Of course, the politicians, dictators, and warmongers weren’t happy, but their voices, which had always seemed so loud and intimidating, were suddenly insignificant. The emperor not only had no clothes, turns out he had no testicles either.
The Thunderhead quite literal y knew everything. When and where to build roads; how to eliminate waste in food distribution and thus end hunger; how to protect the environment from the ever-growing human population. It created jobs, it clothed the poor, and it established the World Code. Now, for the first time in history, law was no longer the shadow of justice, it was justice.
The Thunderhead gave us a perfect world. The utopia that our ancestors could only dream of is our reality.
There was only one thing the Thunderhead was not given authority over.
The Scythedom.
When it was decided that people needed to die in order to ease the tide of population growth, it was also decided that this must be the responsibility of humans. Bridge repair and urban planning could be handled by the Thunderhead, but taking a life was an act of conscience and consciousness. Since it could not be proven that the Thunderhead had either, the Scythedom was born.
I do not regret the decision, but I often wonder if the Thunderhead would have done a bet er job.
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
“But I’m Only Ninety-Six . . .”
While a trip to the market should be an ordinary, everyday occurrence, Citra found that food shopping with a scythe carried its own basket of crazy.
e moment the market doors parted for them and the three of them stepped in, the dread around them was enough to raise gooseflesh on Citra’s arms. Nothing so blatant as gasps or screams—people were used to scythes passing through their daily lives. It was silent, but pervasive, as if they had just accidental y strol ed onto some theatrical stage and fouled the performance.
Citra noticed that, in general, there were three types of people.
1) e Deniers: ese were the people who forged on and pretended the scythe wasn’t there. It wasn’t just a matter of ignoring him—it was actively, wil ful y denying his presence. It reminded Citra of the way very smal children would play hide and seek, covering their own eyes to hide, thinking that if they couldn’t see you then you couldn’t see them.
2) e Escape Artists: ese were the people who ran away but tried to make it look as if they weren’t. ey suddenly remembered they forgot to get eggs, or began chasing aer a running child that didn’t actual y exist. One shopper abandoned a cart, mumbling about a wal et he must have le at home, despite an obvious bulge in his back pocket. He hurried out and didn’t come back.
3) e Scythe’s Pets: ese were the people who went out of their way to engage the scythe and offer him something, with the secret (not so secret) hope that he might grant them immunity, or at least glean the person to their right instead of them some day. “Here, Your Honor, take my melon, it’s bigger. I insist.” Did these people know that such sycophantic behavior would make a scythe want to glean them even more? Not that Citra would
want to level a death penalty for such a thing, but if she were given a choice between some innocent bystander and someone who was being nauseatingly obsequious about their produce, she’d choose the melon-giver.
ere was one shopper who didn’t seem to fit the other three profiles. A woman who actual y seemed pleased to see him.
“Good morning, Scythe Faraday,” she said as they passed her near the deli counter, then looked at Citra and Rowan, curious. “Your niece and nephew?”
“Hardly,” he said, with a bit of disdain in his voice for relatives Citra had no interest in knowing about. “I’ve taken apprentices.”
Her eyes widened a bit. “Such a thing!” She said in a way that made it unclear whether she thought it a good or bad idea. “Do they have a penchant for the work?”
“Not the slightest.”
She nodded. “Wel then, I guess it’s al right. You know what they say:
‘Have not a hand in the blade with abandon.’”
e scythe smiled. “I hope I can introduce them to your strudel sometime.”
She nodded at the two of them. “Wel , that goes without saying.”
Aer she had moved on, Scythe Faraday explained that she was a long-time friend. “She cooks for me from time to time—and she works in the coroner’s office. In my line of work it’s always good to have a friend there.”
“Do you grant her immunity?” Citra asked. Rowan thought the scythe might be indignant at the question, but instead he answered:
“e Scythedom frowns upon those who play favorites, but I’ve found I can grant her immunity on alternate years without raising a red flag.”
“What if another scythe gleans her during the off-years?”
“en I shal attend her funeral with heartfelt grief,” he told them.
As they shopped, Citra chose some snacks that the scythe eyed dubiously.
“Are these real y necessary?” he asked.
“Is anything real y necessary?” Citra responded.
Rowan found it amusing how Citra gave the scythe attitude—but it worked. He let her keep the chips.
Rowan tried to be more practical, picking out staples like eggs, flour, and various proteins and side dishes to go with them.
“Don’t get chickenoid tenders,” Citra said, looking at his choices. “Trust me, my mother’s a food synthesis engineer. at stuff’s not actual chicken—
they grow it in a petri dish.”
Rowan held up another bag of frozen protein. “How about this?”
“SeaSteak? Sure, if you like plankton pressed into meat shapes.”
“Wel then, maybe you should pick your own meals instead of grabbing sweets and snacks.”
“Are you always this boring?” she asked.
“Didn’t he say we have to live as he lives? I don’t think cookie dough ice cream is a part of his lifestyle.”
She sneered at him, but switched out the flavor for vanil a.
As they continued to shop, it was Citra who first noticed two suspicious-looking teens who seemed to be tracking them through the store, lingering behind them, trying to look like they were just shopping. ey were probably unsavories—people who found enjoyment in activities that bordered on the fringe of the law. Sometimes unsavories actual y broke the law in minor ways, although most lost interest eventual y, because they were always caught by the underhead and reprimanded by peace officers. e more troublesome offenders were tweaked with shock nanites in their blood, just powerful enough to deter any scoffing of the law. And if that didn’t work, you got your own personal peace officer 24/7. Citra had an uncle like that. He cal ed his officer his guardian angel, and eventual y married her.
She tugged on Rowan’s sleeve, bringing the unsavories to his attention but not to Scythe Faraday’s.
“Why do you think they’re fol owing us?”
“ey probably think there’s going to be a gleaning and they want to watch,” suggested Rowan, which seemed a likely theory. As it turned out, however, they had other motives.
As the three of them waited in the checkout line, one of the unsavories grabbed Scythe Faraday’s hand and kissed his ring before he could stop him.
e ring began to glow red, indicating his immunity.
“Ha!” said the unsavory, puffing up at his strategic triumph. “I’ve got immunity for a year—and you can’t undo it! I know the rules!”
Scythe Faraday was unfazed. “Yes, good for you,” he said. “You have three hundred sixty-five days of immunity.” And then, looking him in the eye, said, “And I’l be seeing you on day three hundred sixty-six.”
Suddenly the teen’s smug expression dropped, as if al the muscles that held up his face failed. He stuttered a bit, and his friend pul ed him away.
ey ran out of the store as fast as they could.
“Wel played,” said another man in line. He offered to pay for the scythe’s groceries—which was pointless, because scythes got their groceries for free anyway.
“Wil you real y track him down a year from now?” Rowan asked.
e scythe grabbed a rol of breath mints from the rack. “Not worth my time. Besides, I’ve already meted out his punishment. He’l be worried about being gleaned al year. A lesson for both of you: A scythe doesn’t have to fol ow through on a threat for it to be effective.”
en, a few minutes later, as they were loading the grocery bags into a publicar, the scythe looked across the parking lot.
“ere,” he said, “you see that woman? e one who just dropped her purse?”
“Yeah,” said Rowan.
Scythe Faraday pul ed out his phone, aimed the camera at the woman, and in an instant information about her began to scrol on screen. Natural y ninety-six years of age, physical y thirty-four. Mother of nine. Data management technician for a smal shipping company. “She’s off to work aer she puts away her groceries,” the scythe told them. “is aernoon we wil go to her place of business and glean her.”
Citra drew in an audible breath. Not quite a gasp, but close. Rowan focused on his own breathing so he didn’t telegraph his emotions the way Citra had.
“Why?” he asked. “Why her?”
e scythe gave him a cool look. “Why not her?”
“You had a reason for gleaning Kohl Whitlock. . . .”
“Who?” Citra asked.
“A kid I knew at school. When I first met our honorable scythe, here.”
Faraday sighed. “Fatalities in parking lots made up 1.25 percent of al accidental deaths during the last days of the Age of Mortality. Last night I decided I would choose today’s subject from a parking lot.”
“So al this time while we were shopping, you knew it would end with this?” Rowan said.
“I feel bad for you,” said Citra. “Even when you’re food shopping, death is hiding right behind the milk.”
“It never hides,” the scythe told them with a world-weariness that was hard to describe. “Nor does it sleep. You’l learn that soon enough.”
But it wasn’t something either of them was eager to learn.
• • •
at aernoon, just as the scythe had said, they went to the shipping company where the woman worked, and they watched—just as Rowan had watched Kohl’s gleaning. But today it was a little more than mere observation.“I have chosen for you a life-terminating pil ,” Scythe Faraday told the speechless, tremulous woman. He reached into his robe and produced a smal pil in a little glass vial.
“It wil not activate until you bite it, so you can choose the moment. You need not swal ow it, just bite it. Death wil be instantaneous and painless.”
Her head shook like a bobblehead dol . “May I . . . may I cal my children?
Scythe Faraday sadly shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. But we shal pass on any message you have to them.”
“What would it hurt to al ow her to say good-bye?” Citra asked.
He put up his hand to silence her, and handed the woman a pen and piece of paper.
“Say al you need to say in a letter. I promise we shal deliver it.”
ey waited outside of her office. Scythe Faraday seemed to have infinite patience.
“What if she opens a window and decides to splat?” Rowan asked.
“en her life wil end on schedule. It would be a more unpleasant choice, but the ultimate result is the same.”
e woman didn’t choose to splat. Instead, she let them back into the room, politely handed the envelope to Scythe Faraday, and sat down at her desk.
“I’m ready.”
en Scythe Faraday did something they didn’t expect. He turned to Rowan and handed him the vial. “Please place the pil in Mrs. Becker’s mouth.”
Scythe Faraday didn’t answer. He simply held the vial out, waiting for Rowan to take it. Rowan knew he wasn’t official y performing the gleaning, but to be an intermediary . . . the thought was debilitating. He swal owed, tasting bitterness as if the pil were in his own mouth. He refused to take it.
Scythe Faraday gave him a moment more, then turned to Citra.
“You, then.”
Citra just shook her head.
Scythe Faraday smiled. “Very good,” he told them. “I was testing you. I would not have been pleased if either of you were eager to administer death.”
At the word “death,” the woman took a shuddering breath.
Scythe Faraday opened the vial and careful y removed the pil . It was triangular with a dark green coating. Who knew death could arrive so smal ?
“But . . . but I’m only ninety-six,” the woman said.
“We know,” the scythe told her. “Now please . . . open your mouth.
Remember, it’s not to swal ow; you must bite it.”
She opened her mouth as she was told, and Scythe Faraday placed the pil on her tongue. She closed her mouth, but didn’t bite it right away. She looked at each of them in turn. Rowan, then Citra, then final y settled her gaze on Scythe Faraday. en the slightest crunch. And she went limp.
Simple as that. But not so simple at al .
Citra’s eyes were moist. She pressed her lips together. As much as Rowan tried to control his emotions, his breath came out uneasily and he felt lightheaded.
And then Scythe Faraday turned to Citra. “Check for a pulse, please.”
“Who, me?”
e scythe was patient. He didn’t ask again. e man never asked a thing twice. When she continued to hesitate, he final y said, “is time it’s not a test. I actual y want you to confirm for me that she has no pulse.”
Citra reached up a hand to the woman’s neck.
“Other side,” the scythe told her.
She pressed her fingers to the woman’s carotid artery, just beneath her ear.
“No pulse.”
Satisfied, Scythe Faraday stood.
“So that’s it?” Citra asked.
“What were you expecting?” said Rowan. “A chorus of angels?”
Citra threw him a half-hearted glare. “But I mean . . . it’s so . . .
uneventful.”
Rowan knew what she meant. Rowan had experienced the electrical jolt that had taken his schoolmate’s life. It was awful, but somehow this was worse. “What now? Do we just leave her like this?”
“Best not to linger,” Scythe Faraday said, tapping something out on his phone. “I’ve notified the coroner to come col ect Mrs. Becker’s body.” en he took the letter she had written and slipped it into one of the many pockets of his robe. “You two shal present the letter to her family at the funeral.”
“Wait,” said Citra. “We’re going to her funeral?”
“I thought you said it was best not to linger,” said Rowan.
“Lingering and paying respects are two different things. I attend the funerals of al the people I glean.”
“Is that a scythe rule?” Rowan asked, having never been to a funeral.
“No, it’s my rule,” he told them. “It’s cal ed ‘common decency.’”
en they le, Rowan and Citra both avoiding eye contact with the dead woman’s coworkers. is, both of them realized, was their first initiation rite.
is was the moment their apprenticeship had truly begun.
NO LAWS BEYOND THESE
1) Thou shalt kil .
2) Thou shalt kil with no bias, bigotry, or malice aforethought.
3) Thou shalt grant an annum of immunity to the beloved of those who accept your coming, and to anyone else you deem worthy.
4) Thou shalt kil the beloved of those who resist.
5) Thou shalt serve humanity for the ful span of thy days, and thy family shal have immunity as recompense for as long as you live.
6) Thou shalt lead an exemplary life in word and deed, and keep a journal of each and every day.
7) Thou shalt kil no scythe beyond thyself.
8) Thou shalt claim no earthly possessions, save thy robes, ring, and journal.
9) Thou shalt have neither spouse nor spawn.
10) Thou shalt be beholden to no laws beyond these.
Once a year I fast and ponder the commandments. In truth, I ponder them daily, but once a year I al ow them to be my sole sustenance. There is genius in their simplicity. Before the Thunderhead, governments had constitutions and massive tomes of laws—yet even then, they were forever debated and chal enged and manipulated. Wars were fought over the different interpretations of the same doctrine.
When I was much more naive, I thought that the simplicity of the scythe commandments made them impervious to scrutiny. From whatever angle you approached them, they looked the same. Over my many years, I’ve been both bemused and horrified by how mal eable and elastic they can be. The things we scythes at empt to justify. The things that we excuse.
In my early days, there were several scythes stil alive who were present when the commandments were formed. Now none remain, al having invoked commandment number seven. I wish I would have asked them how the commandments came about. What led to each one? How did they decide upon the wording? Were there any that were jet isoned before the final ten were writ en in stone?
And why number ten?
Of al the commandments, number ten gives me the greatest pause for thought. For to put oneself above al other laws is a fundamental recipe for disaster.
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
An Elegy of Scythes
e flight was on time. As usual. While weather couldn’t entirely be control ed, it was easily diverted away from airports and out of flight paths.
Most airlines boasted 99.9 percent on-time service.
It was a ful flight, but with the lavishly appointed seats of modern air travel, it didn’t feel crowded at al . ese days flying was as comfortable as sitting in one’s own living room, with the added perk of live entertainment.
String quartets and vocal stylists soared across the skies with a cabin ful of contented passengers. Air travel these days was far more civilized than in the Age of Mortality. It was now an exceptional y pleasant way to reach one’s destination. Today, however, the passengers of BigSky Air flight 922 were on their way to a different destination than the one on which they had planned.
e businessman was seated comfortably in seat 15C—an aisle seat. He always requested that seat, not out of superstition but out of habit. When he didn’t get 15C, he was cranky, and resentful of whoever did. e company he ran, which was developing hibernation technology, would someday make the longest journeys seem to pass in a matter of minutes, but for now he would be happy with BigSky Air, as long as he got seat 15C.
People were stil filing on, taking their seats. He eyed the passengers moving down the aisle with mild disinterest, but only to make sure they didn’t hit his shoulder with their purses and carry-ons as they passed.
“Are you heading out or heading home?” asked the woman sitting beside him in 15A. ere was no 15B—the concept of the B seat, where one had to sit between two other passengers, had been eliminated along with other unpleasant things, like disease and government.
“Out,” he told her. “And you?”
“Home,” she told him with a heavy but relieved sigh.
At five minutes to departure, a commotion up front caught his attention.
A scythe had entered the plane and was talking to a flight attendant. When a scythe wants to travel, any seat is fair game. e scythe could displace a passenger, forcing them to take a different seat, or even a different flight if there were no other available seats. More unnerving, however, were tales of scythes who gleaned the passenger from the seat they took.
e businessman could only hope that this particular scythe didn’t have his sights set on seat 15C.
e scythe’s robe was unusual. Royal blue, speckled with glittering jewels that appeared to be diamonds. Rather ostentatious for a scythe. e businessman didn’t know what to make of it. e age the scythe presented was late thirties, although that meant nothing. No one looked their true age anymore; he could have been anywhere from thirty-something to two-hundred-thirty-something. His hair was dark and wel -groomed. His eyes were invasive. e businessman tried not to catch his gaze as the scythe looked down the aisle into the cabin.
en three more scythes appeared behind the first. ey were younger—
perhaps in their early twenties. eir robes, each in a different bright color, were also decorated with gems. ere was a dark-haired woman in apple green speckled with emeralds, a man in orange speckled with rubies, and another man in yel ow speckled with golden citrines.
What was the col ective word for a group of scythes? An “elegy,” wasn’t it?
Odd that there’d be a word for something so rare. In his experience, scythes were always solitary, never traveling together. A flight attendant greeted the elegy of scythes, and then the second they were past her, she turned, le the plane, and ran down the jetway.
She’s escaping, thought the businessman. But then he banished the thought. She couldn’t be. She was probably just hurrying to let the gate agent know of the added passengers. at’s al . She couldn’t be panicking—flight attendants were trained not to panic. But then the remaining flight attendant closed the door, and the look on her face was anything but reassuring.
e passengers began talking to one another. Mumbling. A little bit of nervous laughter.
en the lead scythe addressed the passengers. “Your attention, please,”
he said with an unnerving smile. “I regret to inform you that this entire flight has been selected for gleaning.”
e businessman heard it, but his brain told him that he could not have possibly heard correctly. Or maybe this was scythe humor, if such a thing even existed. is entire flight has been selected for gleaning. at couldn’t be possible. It couldn’t be al owed. Could it?
In a few moments passengers began to wrap their minds around what the scythe had said. en came the gasps, the wails, the whimpers, and final y uncontrol ed sobs. e misery could not have been worse had they lost an engine in flight, as planes did back in the mortal days, when technology occasional y failed.
e businessman was a quick study, and excel ed at split-second decisions in crisis. He knew what he had to do. Perhaps others were thinking the same thing, but he was the one who took action first. He le his seat and hurled himself down the aisle toward the back of the plane. Others fol owed him, but he was first to the back door. He quickly scanned its operation, then pul ed the red lever and swung the door open into a bright sunny morning.
A jump from this height to the tarmac might have broken a bone or twisted an ankle, but the healing nanites in his blood would quickly release opiates and deaden the pain. He’d be able to escape in spite of any injury. But before he could leap, he heard the lead scythe say:
“I suggest you al return to your seats if you value the lives of your loved ones.”
It was standard procedure for scythes to glean the families of those who resist or run from being gleaned. Familial gleaning was a remarkable deterrent. But this was a ful plane—if he jumped and ran, how would they know who he was?
As if reading his mind, the lead scythe said:
“We have the manifest from this plane. We know the names of everyone on board. Including the name of the flight attendant who displayed cowardice unbecoming to her position and le. Her entire family wil pay the price, along with her.”
e businessman slid down to his knees and put his head in his hands. A man behind him pushed past and jumped anyway. He hit the ground and ran, more worried by what was happening in the moment than what might happen tomorrow. Perhaps he had no family he cared about, or perhaps he’d rather they journey with him into oblivion. But as for the businessman, he could not bear the thought of his wife and children gleaned because of him.
Gleaning is necessary, he told himself. Everyone knows, everyone has agreed this is a crucial necessity. Who was he to go against it? It only seemed terrible now that he was the one lined up in the cold crosshairs of death.
en the lead scythe raised an arm and pointed at him. His fingernails seemed just the slightest bit too long.
“You,” he said, “the bold one. Come here.”
Others in the aisle stepped aside and the businessman found himself moving forward. He couldn’t even feel his legs doing it. It was as if the scythe were pul ing him with an invisible string. His presence was that commanding.
“We should glean him first,” said the blond, brutish scythe in a bright orange robe, wielding what appeared to be a flamethrower. “Glean him first to set an example.”
But the lead scythe shook his head. “First of al , put that thing away; we wil not play with fire on a plane. Secondly, setting an example presupposes that someone wil be le to learn from it. It’s pointless when there’s no one to set an example for.”
He lowered his weapon and looked down, chastised. e other two scythes remained silent.
“You were so quick to leave your seat,” the lead scythe said to the businessman. “Clearly you’re the alpha of this plane, and as alpha I wil al ow you to choose the order in which these good folks shal be gleaned. You can be last if you choose, but first you must select the order of the others.”
“I . . . I . . .”
“Come now, no indecisiveness. You were decisive enough when you ran to the back of the plane. Bring that formidable wil to bear on this moment.”
Clearly the scythe was enjoying this. He shouldn’t enjoy it—that’s one of the basic precepts of Scythedom. A random part of his mind thought, I should lodge a complaint. Which he realized would be very difficult to do if he was dead.
He looked to the terrified people around him—now they were terrified of him. He was the enemy too, now.
“We’re waiting,” said the woman in green, impatient to begin.
“How?” e man asked, trying to control his breathing, stal ing for time.
“How wil you glean us?”
e lead scythe pul ed back a fold of his robe to display an entire col ection of weapons neatly concealed beneath. Knives of various lengths.
Guns. Other objects that the man didn’t even recognize. “Our method wil be as our mood suits us. Sans incendiary devices, of course. Now please start choosing people so we may begin.”
e female scythe tightened her grip on the handle of a machete and brushed back her dark hair with her free hand. Did she just actual y lick her lips? is would not be a gleaning, it would be a bloodbath, and the businessman realized he wanted no part of it. Yes, his fate was sealed—
nothing could change that. Which meant he didn’t have to play the scythe’s twisted game. Suddenly he found himself sublimating his fear, rising to a place where he could look the scythe in his dark eyes, the same deep shade of blue as his robe.
“No,” the man said, “I wil not choose and I wil not give you the pleasure of watching me squirm.” en he turned to the other passengers. “I advise everyone here to end your own lives before these scythes get their hands on you. ey take too much pleasure in it. ey don’t deserve their rank any more than they deserve the honor of gleaning you.”
e lead scythe glared at him, but only for a moment. en he turned to his three compatriots. “Begin!” he ordered. e others drew weapons and began the awful gleaning.
“I am your completion,” the lead scythe said loudly to the dying. “I am the last word of your lives wel -lived. Give thanks. And thus farewel .”
e lead scythe pul ed out his own blade, but the businessman was ready.
e moment the blade was drawn, he thrust himself forward onto it—a final wil ful act, making death his own choice, rather than the scythe’s. Denying the scythe, if not his method, then his madness.
In my early years, I wondered why it was so rare to catch a scythe out of his or her robes and in common street clothes. It’s a rule in some places, but not in MidMerica. Here it is just an accepted practice, although rarely violated. Then, as I set led in, it occurred to me why it must be. For our own peace of mind, we scythes must retain a certain level of separation from the rest of humanity. Even in the privacy of my own home I find myself wearing only the simple lavender frock that I wear beneath my robes.
Some would cal this behavior aloof. I suppose on some level it is, but for me it’s more the need to remind myself that I am “other.”
Certainly, most uniformed positions al ow the wearers to have a separate life. Peace officers and firefighters, for instance, are only partial y defined by their job. In the off hours they wear jeans and T-shirts. They have barbecues for neighbors and coach their children in sports. But to be a scythe means you are a scythe every hour of every day. It defines you to the core of your being, and only in dreams is one free of the yoke.
Yet even in dreams I often find myself gleaning. . . .
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
Kil craft
“During your year with me,” Scythe Faraday told Rowan and Citra, “you wil learn the proper way to wield various blades, you wil become marksmen in more than a dozen types of firearms, you wil have a working knowledge of toxicology, and you wil train in the deadliest of martial arts. You wil not become masters in these things—that takes many years—but wil have the basic skil s upon which you wil build.”
“Skil s that wil be useless for the one you don’t choose,” Citra pointed out.“Nothing we learn is useless,” he told her.
While the scythe’s house was modest and unadorned, it had one impressive feature: the weapons den. It had once been the garage of the old house, but now was lined with the scythe’s extensive weapons col ection.
One wal was hung with blades, another firearms. A third wal looked like a pharmacist’s shelf, and the fourth wal held more archaic objects. Elaborately carved bows, a quiver of obsidian-tipped arrows, frighteningly muscular crossbows—even a mace, although it was hard for them to imagine Scythe Faraday taking someone out with a mace. e fourth wal was more of a museum, they supposed, but the fact that they weren’t sure was unsettling.
e daily regimen was rigorous. Rowan and Citra trained with blades and staffs, sparring against the scythe, who was surprisingly strong and limber for a man of his apparent age. ey learned to shoot at a special firing range for scythes and apprentices, where weapons that were banned for public use were not only al owed, but encouraged. ey learned the basics of Black Widow Bokator—a deadly version of the ancient Cambodian martial art developed specifical y for the Scythedom. It le them exhausted, but stronger than either of them had ever been.
Physical training, however, was only half their regimen. ere was an old oak table in the center of the weapons den, clearly a relic from the Age of Mortality. is is where Scythe Faraday spent several hours a day schooling them in the ways of a scythe.
Studies in mental acuity, history, and the chemistry of poisons—as wel as daily entries in their apprentice journals. ere was more to learn about death than either of them had ever considered.
“History, chemistry, writing—this is like school,” Rowan grumbled to Citra, because he wouldn’t dare complain to Scythe Faraday.
And then there was the gleaning.
“Each scythe must perform a quota of two hundred sixty gleanings per year,” Scythe Faraday told them, “which averages to five per week.”
“So you get weekends off,” joked Rowan—trying to add a little nervous levity to the discussion. But Faraday was not amused. For him nothing about gleaning was a laughing matter. “On days that I don’t glean, I attend funerals and do research for future gleanings. Scythes . . . or should I say good scythes . . . don’t oen have days off.”
e idea that not al scythes were good was something neither Rowan or Citra had ever considered. It was widely accepted that scythes adhered to the highest moral and ethical standards. ey were wise in their dealings and fair in their choices. Even the ones who sought celebrity were seen to deserve it. e idea that some scythes might not be as honorable as Scythe Faraday did not sit wel with either of his new apprentices.
• • •
e raw shock of gleaning never le Citra. Although Scythe Faraday had not, since that first day, asked them to be the life-taking hand, being an accomplice was difficult enough. Each untimely end came draped in its own shroud of dread, like a recurring nightmare that never lost its potency. She had thought she would grow numb—that she would become used to the work. But it didn’t happen.“It means I chose wisely,” Scythe Faraday told her. “If you do not cry yourself to sleep on a regular basis, you are not compassionate enough to be a scythe.”
She doubted Rowan cried himself to sleep. He was the type of kid who kept his emotions very much to himself. She couldn’t read him. He was opaque, and it bothered her. Or perhaps he was so transparent, she was seeing through him to the other side. She couldn’t be sure.
ey quickly learned that Scythe Faraday was very creative in his gleaning methods. He never repeated the exact same method twice.
“But aren’t there scythes who are ritualistic in their work,” Citra asked him, “performing each gleaning exactly the same?”
“Yes, but we must each find our own way,” he told her. “Our own code of conduct. I prefer to see each person I glean as an individual deserving of an end that is unique.”
He outlined for them the seven basic methods of kil cra. “Most common are the three Bs: blade, bul et, and blunt force. e next three are asphyxiation, poison, and catastrophic induction, such as electrocution or fire—although I find fire a horrific way to glean and would never use it. e final method is weaponless force, which is why we train you in Bokator.”
To be a scythe, he explained, meant that one had to be wel -versed in al methods. Citra realized that being “wel -versed” meant she would have to participate in various types of gleaning. Would he have her pul the trigger?
rust the knife? Swing the club? She wanted to believe she wasn’t capable of it. She desperately wanted to believe she wasn’t scythe material. It was the first time in her life that she aspired to fail.
• • •
Rowan’s feelings on the matter were mixed. He found that Scythe Faraday’s moral imperative and ethical high ground infused Rowan with purpose—but only in the scythe’s presence. When le to his own thoughts, Rowan doubted everything. Burned into his mind was the look on that woman’s face as she fearful y yet obediently opened her mouth to be poisoned. e look on her face the moment before she bit down. I am an accomplice to the world’s oldest crime, he told himself in his loneliest moments. And it wil only get worse.
While the journals of scythes were public record, an apprentice stil had the luxury of privacy. Scythe Faraday gave Rowan and Citra pale leather-bound volumes of rough-edged parchment. To Rowan it looked like a relic
from the dark ages. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Faraday gave them a feather quil to go with it. Merciful y, however, they were al owed to use normal writing utensils.
“A scythe’s journal is traditional y made of lambskin parchment and kid leather.”
“I assume you mean ‘kid’ as in ‘goat,’” Rowan said, “and not ‘kid’ as in
‘kid.’”
at final y made the scythe laugh. Citra seemed to be annoyed that he had made Faraday laugh—as if it put him a point ahead of her. Rowan knew that as much as she hated the idea of being a scythe, she would jockey for position over him because that’s how she was hardwired. Competition was in her very nature; she couldn’t help herself.
Rowan was much better at picking his battles. He could compete when necessary, but rarely got caught up in petty one-upsmanship. He wondered if that would give him an advantage over Citra. He wondered if he wanted one.
Being a scythe would not have been his life choice. He had not made any life choices yet, so he had no real clue what he would do with his eternal future. But now that he was being mentored by a scythe, he began to feel he might have the mettle to be one. If Scythe Faraday had selected him as moral y capable of the job, perhaps he was.
As for the journal, Rowan hated it. In a large family where no one particularly cared to hear his thoughts on anything, he had become accustomed to keeping his thoughts to himself.
“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Citra said as they worked in their journals aer dinner one evening. “No one wil ever read it but you.”
“So why write it?” Rowan snapped back.
Citra sighed as if talking to a child. “It’s to prepare you for writing an official scythe’s journal. Whichever one of us gets the ring wil be legal y obligated by commandment six to keep a journal every day of our lives.”
“Which I’m sure no one wil read,” added Rowan.
“But people could read it. e Scythe Archive is open to everyone.”
“Yeah,” said Rowan, “like the underhead. People can read anything, but no one does. Al they do is play games and watch cat holograms.”
Citra shrugged. “Al the more reason not to worry about writing one. If it’s lost among a gazil ion pages, you can write your grocery list and what you ate for breakfast. No one wil care.”
But Rowan cared. If he was going to put pen to paper—if he was going to do what a scythe does—he would do it right or not at al . And so far, as he looked at his painful y blank page, he was leaning toward “not at al .”
He watched Citra as she wrote, completely absorbed in her journal. From where he sat, he couldn’t read what she had written, but he could tel it was in fine penmanship. It figures she would take penmanship in school. It was one of those classes people took just to be superior. Like Latin. He supposed he’d have to learn to write in cursive if he became a scythe, but right now he’d be stuck with inelegant, sloppy printing.
He wondered, had Citra and he been in the same school, would they have gotten along? ey probably wouldn’t have even known each other. She was the type of girl who participates, and Rowan was the kind of kid who avoids.
eir circles were about as far from intersecting as Jupiter and Mars in the night sky. Now, however, they had been pul ed into convergence. ey were not exactly friends—they were never given the opportunity to develop a friendship before being thrust into apprenticeship together. ey were partners; they were adversaries—and Rowan found it increasingly hard to parse his feelings about her. Al he knew was that he liked watching her write.
• • •
Scythe Faraday was strict on his no-family policy. “It is il -advised for yo,u to have contact with your family during your apprenticeship.” It was difficult for Citra. She missed her parents, but more than that, she missed her brother, Ben—which surprised her, because at home, she never had much patience for him.Rowan seemed to have no problem with being separated from his family.
“ey’d much rather have their immunity than have me around, anyway,”
he told Citra.
“Boo hoo,” Citra said. “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”
“Not at al . Envious maybe. It makes it easier for me to leave it al behind.”
Scythe Faraday did bend his own rule once, however. About a month in, he al owed Citra to attend her aunt’s wedding.
While everyone else was dressed in gowns and tuxedos, Scythe Faraday did not al ow Citra to dress up, “Lest you feel yourself a part of that world.” It
worked. Wearing simple street clothes amid the pageantry made her feel even more the outsider—and the apprentice armband made it worse.
Perhaps this was the reason Faraday al owed her to attend—to make crystal clear the distinction between who she had been and who she was now.
“So, what’s it like?” asked her cousin Amanda. “Gleaning and stuff. Is it, like, gross?”
“We’re not al owed to talk about it,” Citra told her. Which was not true, but she had no interest in discussing gleaning like it was school gossip.
She should have nurtured that conversation, however, instead of shutting it down, because Amanda was one of the few people who spoke to her. ere were plenty of sideways glances and people talking about her when they thought she wasn’t watching, but most everyone avoided her like she carried a mortal-age disease. Perhaps if she already had her ring they might try to curry favor in hopes of receiving immunity, but apparently as an apprentice she offered them nothing but the creeps.
Her brother was standoffish, and even speaking to her mother was awkward. She asked standard questions like “Are you eating?” and “Are you getting enough sleep?”
“I understand there’s a boy living with you,” her father said.
“He has his own room and he’s not interested in me at al ,” she told him, which she found oddly embarrassed to admit.
Citra sat through the wedding ceremony, but excused herself before the reception and took a publicar back to Scythe Faraday’s house, unable to bear another minute of it.
“You’re back early,” Scythe Faraday commented when she returned. And although he feigned surprise, he had set her place for dinner.
Scythes are supposed to have a keen appreciation of death, yet there are some things that are beyond even our comprehension.
The woman I gleaned today asked me the oddest question.
“Where do I go now?” she asked.
“Wel ,” I explained calmly, “your memories and life-recording are already stored in the Thunderhead, so it won’t be lost. Your body is returned to the Earth in a manner determined by your next of kin.”
“Yes, I know al that,” she said. “But what about me?”
The question perplexed me. “As I said, your memory construct wil exist in the Thunderhead. Loved ones wil be able to talk to it, and your construct wil respond.”
“Yes,” she said, get ing a bit agitated, “but what about me?”
I gleaned her then. Only after she was gone did I say, “I don’t know.”
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
A Matter of Choice
“I wil glean alone today,” Scythe Faraday told Rowan and Citra one day in February, the second month of their apprenticeship. “While I am gone I have a task for each of you.” He took Citra into the weapons den. “You, Citra, shal polish each of my blades.”
She had been in the weapons den nearly every day for lessons, but to be there alone, nothing but her and instruments of death, was entirely different.
e scythe went to the blade wal , which had everything from swords to switchblades. “Some are merely dusty, others tarnished. You shal decide what type of care each one needs.”
She watched the way his eyes moved from one blade to another, lingering long enough, perhaps, to recal a memory.
“You’ve used them al ?” she asked
“Only about half of them—and even then, for only one gleaning.” He reached up and pul ed a rapier from the fourth wal —the one with the older-looking weapons. is one looked like the kind one of the ree Musketeers might have used. “When I was young, I had much more of a flair for drama.
I went to glean a man who fancied himself a fencer. So I chal enged him to a duel.”
“And you won?”
“No, I lost. Twice. He skewered me through the neck the first time and tore open my femoral artery the second—he was very good. Each time, aer I woke up in the revival center, I returned to chal enge him. His wins bought him time—but he was chosen to be gleaned, and I would not relent. Some scythes wil change their minds, but that leads to compromise, and it favors the persuasive. I make my decisions firm.
“In the fourth bout, I pierced his heart with the tip of my blade. As he breathed his last, he thanked me for al owing him to die fighting. It was the only time in al my years as a scythe that I had been thanked for what I do.”
He sighed, and put the rapier back in what Citra realized was a place of honor.
“If you have al these weapons, why did you take our knife that day you came to glean my neighbor?” Citra had to ask.
e scythe grinned. “To gauge your reaction.”
“I threw it away,” she told him.
“I suspected as much,” he said. “But these you wil polish.” en he le
her there.
When he was gone, Citra studied the weapons. She was not particularly morbid, but she found herself wanting to know which blades had been used, and how. It seemed to her that a noble weapon deserved to have its story passed down, and if not to her and Rowan, then who?
She pul ed a scimitar from the wal . A heavy beast that could decapitate you with a single swing. Had Scythe Faraday used it for a beheading? It was, in a way, his style: swi, painless, efficient. As she moved it clumsily through the air, she wondered if she had the strength to behead someone.
My god, what am I becoming?
She put the weapon on the table, grabbed the rag, and rubbed polish on it, and when she finished she went to the next, and the next, trying not to see her reflection in each of the gleaming blades.
• • •
Rowan’s task was not as visceral, but was even more troubling.“Today, you shal lay the groundwork for my next gleaning,” Scythe Faraday told him, then gave him a list of parameters that tomorrow’s subject should have. “Al the information you need is in the underhead, if you’re clever enough to find it.” en he le for the day’s gleaning.
Rowan almost made the mistake of giving the list of parameters to the
underhead and asking it for a subject—until he remembered that asking the underhead for assistance was strictly forbidden for scythes. ey had ful access to the great cloud’s wealth of information, but could not access its algorithmic “conscious” mind. Scythe Faraday had told them of a scythe
who tried to do so. e underhead itself reported him to the High Blade, and he was “severely disciplined.”
“How is a scythe disciplined?” Rowan had asked.
“He was put to death twelvefold by a jury of scythes, then revived each time. Aer the twelh revival, he was on probation for a year.”
Rowan imagined a jury of scythes would be very creative in their methods of punishment. He suspected that dying twelve times at the hands of scythes would be a lot worse than splatting.
He began to enter search parameters. He was instructed to have his search include not just their city, but al of MidMerica—which stretched nearly a thousand miles across the middle of the continent. en he narrowed the search to towns with populations under ten thousand that were also on the banks of rivers. en to homes or apartments that were within one hundred feet of the river bank. en he searched for people twenty and older who lived in those residences.
at gave him more than forty thousand people.
He had done that in five minutes. e next few requirements were not going to be as easy to nail down.
e subject must be a strong swimmer.
He got a list of every high school and university in each river town, and cross-referenced everyone who had been on a swim team for the past twenty years or had registered for a triathlon. About eight hundred people.
e subject must be a dog lover.
Using Scythe Faraday’s access code, he found the subscription lists of every publication and blog dealing with dogs. He accessed pet store databases to get a list of anyone who made regular purchases of dog food over the past few years. at brought the number down to one hundred twelve names.
e subject must have a history of heroism in a nonprofessional capacity.
He painstakingly searched for words like “hero,” “bravery,” and “rescue,”
for al one hundred twelve names. He thought he’d be lucky if a single one came up—but to his surprise, four of them were noted as having done something heroic at some point in their lives.
He clicked on each name and brought up four pictures. He immediately regretted it, because the moment those names had faces, they became people instead of parameters.
A man with a round face and a winning smile.
A woman who could have been anyone’s mother.
A guy with a bad case of bed-hair.
A man who looked like he hadn’t shaved in three days.
Four people. And Rowan was about to decide which one would die tomorrow.
He immediately found himself leaning toward the unshaven man, but realized he was showing a bias. A person shouldn’t be discriminated against because he hadn’t shaved for a picture. And was he ruling out the woman just because she was a woman?
Okay then, the guy with the smile. But was Rowan overcompensating now by choosing the most pleasant-looking of them?
He decided to learn more about each of them, using Faraday’s access code to dig up more personal information than he real y should have been al owed to; but this was a person’s life he was dealing with—shouldn’t he use any means necessary to make his decision fair?
is one had run into a burning building in his youth to save a family member. But this one has three young kids. But this one volunteers at an animal shelter. But this one’s brother was gleaned just two years ago. . . .
He thought each fact would help him, but the more he came to know about each of them, the harder the decision became. He kept digging into their lives, getting more and more desperate, until the front door opened and Scythe Faraday returned. It was dark out. When had night fal en?
e scythe looked weary, and his robes were splattered with blood.
“Today’s gleaning was . . . more troublesome than expected,” he said.
Citra came out of the weapons den. “Al blades are now polished to a perfect shine!” she announced.
Faraday gave her his nod of approval. en he turned to Rowan, who stil sat at the computer. “And who do we glean next?”
“I . . . uh . . . narrowed it down to four.”
“And?” said the scythe.
“Al four fit the profile.”
“And?” said the scythe again.
“Wel , this one just got married, and this one just bought a house—”
“Pick one,” said the scythe.
“—and this one received a humanitarian award last year—”
“PICK ONE!” yel ed the scythe with a ferocity Rowan had never heard from the man. e very wal s seemed to recoil from his voice. Rowan though he might get a reprieve, as he had when Faraday asked him to hand that woman the cyanide pil . But no; today’s test was very different. Rowan looked to Citra, who stil stood in the doorway of the weapons den, frozen like a bystander at an accident. He was truly alone in this awful decision.
Rowan looked to the screen, grimacing, and pointed to the man with bed-hair. “Him,” Rowan said. “Glean him.”
Rowan closed his eyes. He had just condemned a man to death because he’d had a bad hair day.
en he felt Faraday put a firm hand on his shoulder. He thought he’d get a reprimand, but instead, the scythe said, “Wel done.”
Rowan opened his eyes. “ank you, sir.”
“Were this not the hardest thing you’ve ever done, I’d be concerned.”
“Does it ever get easier?” Rowan asked.
“I certainly hope not,” the scythe said.
• • •
e fol owing aernoon, Bradford Zil er returned from work to find a scythe sitting in his living room. e scythe stood up as Bradford entered.His instincts told him to turn and run, but before he did, a teenage boy with a green armband, who had been standing off to the side, closed the door behind him.
He waited with increasing dread for the scythe to speak, but instead the scythe gestured to the boy, who cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Zil er, you have been chosen for gleaning.”
“Tel him the rest, Rowan,” said the scythe patiently.
“I mean to say that . . . that I chose you for gleaning.”
Bradford looked between the two of them, suddenly deeply relieved, because this was clearly some sort of joke. “Okay, who the hel are you? Who put you up to this?”
en the scythe held up his hand, showing his ring. And Bradford’s spirits fel again like the second drop of a rol er coaster. at was no fake—it was the real thing “e boy is one of my apprentices,” the scythe said.
“I’m sorry,” said the boy. “It’s not personal—you just fit a certain profile.
Back in the Age of Mortality lots of people died trying to perform rescues. A lot of them were people who jumped into flooded rivers to save their pets.
Most of them were good swimmers, but that doesn’t matter in a flood.”
e dogs! thought Bradford. at’s right, the dogs! “You can’t hurt me!” he said. “You do, and my dogs’l rip you to pieces.” But where were they?
en a girl came out of his bedroom, wearing the same armband as the boy. “I sedated al three,” she said. “ey’l be fine, but they won’t be bothering anyone.” ere was blood on her arm. Not the dogs’ but her own.
ey had bitten her. Good for them.
“It’s not personal,” the boy said again. “I’m sorry.”
“One apology is enough,” the scythe told the boy. “Especial y when it’s genuine.”
Bradford guffawed, even though he knew this was real. He just somehow found this funny. His knees weak, he settled onto the sofa and his laughter resolved into misery. How was this fair? How was any of this fair?”
But then the boy knelt down before him, and when Bradford looked up, he was caught by the boy’s gaze. It was as if he were looking into the eyes of a much older soul.
“Listen to me, Mr. Zil er,” the boy said. “I know you saved your sister from a fire when you were my age. I know how hard you struggled to save your marriage. And I know you think that your daughter doesn’t love you, but she does.”
Bradford stared at him, incredulous. “How do you know al this?”
e boy pursed his lips. “It’s our job to know. Your gleaning won’t change any of that. You lived a good life. Scythe Faraday is here to complete it for you.”
Bradford begged to make a phone cal , pleaded for just one more day, but of course, those things were not granted. ey said he could write a note, but he couldn’t bring himself to find anything to write.
“I know how that feels,” the boy told him.
“How wil you do it?” he final y asked them.
e scythe responded. ‘“I have chosen for you a traditional drowning. We shal take you to the river. I shal submerge you until your life leaves you.”
Bradford clenched his eyes. “I’ve heard that drowning is a bad way to go.”
“Can I give him some of the stuff I gave the dogs?” the girl asked. “Knock him out so that he’l already be unconscious?”
e scythe considered it and nodded. “If you choose, we can spare you the suffering.”
But Bradford shook his head, realizing he wanted every second he had le. “No, I want to be awake.” If drowning was to be his last experience, then let him experience it. He could feel his heart beating faster, his body trembling with the surge of adrenaline. He was afraid, but fear meant he was stil alive.
“Come then,” the scythe told him gently. “We’l al go down to the river together.”
• • •
Citra was awed by how Rowan handled himself. Although he began a little shaky when he first spoke to the man, he took charge. He took the reigns of that man’s fear and gave him peace. Citra only hoped that when it came her turn to make a choice, she could keep her composure as wel as Rowan had.Al she had done today was tranquilize a few dogs. Sure, she got bitten in the process, but it was nothing, real y. She tried to convince Faraday to take the dogs to a shelter, but he wouldn’t have it. He did al ow her to cal the shelter to come for the dogs. And the coroner to come for the man. e scythe offered to take her to a hospital for some speedhealing of the dog bite on her arm, but she declined. Her own nanites would heal it by morning, and besides, there was something compel ing about the discomfort. She owed it to the dead man to hurt a little for him.
“at was impressive,” she told Rowan on the long ride home.
“Yeah, right until I puked on the riverbank.”
“But that was only aer he was gleaned,” Citra pointed out. “You gave that man strength to face death.”
Rowan shrugged. “I guess.”
Citra found it both maddening and endearing how modest he could be.
There’s a poem by Honorable Scythe Socrates—one of the first scythes. He wrote many poems, but this one has grown to be my personal favorite.
Have not a hand in the blade with abandon,
Cul from the fold al the brazen and bold,
For a dog who just might,
Love the bark and the bite,
Is a carrion raven, the craven of old.
It reminds me that in spite of our lofty ideals and the many safeguards to protect the Scythedom from corruption and depravity, we must always be vigilant, because power comes infected with the only disease left to us: the virus cal ed human nature. I fear for us al if scythes begin to love what they do.
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
Esme
Esme ate far too much pizza. Her mother told her pizza would be the death of her. She never imagined it might actual y be true.
e scythe attack came less than a minute aer she was given her slice, piping hot from the oven. It was the end of the school day, and the daily trials of fourth grade had exhausted her. Lunch had sucked. e tuna salad her mother had given her was warm and mildly fermented by the time lunch rol ed around. Not exactly appetizing. In fact, none of the food her mother packed for her hit high on the flavor scale. She was trying to get Esme to eat healthier, because Esme had a bit of a weight problem. And although her nanites could be programmed to speed up her metabolism, her mother wouldn’t hear of it. She claimed it would be treating the symptom, not the problem.
“You can’t solve everything by tweaking your nanites,” her mother told her. “You need to learn self-control.”
Wel , she could learn self-control tomorrow. Today she wanted pizza.
Her favorite pizza place, Luigi’s, was in the food court of the Fulcrum City Gal eria—which was on her way home from school. Sort of. She was negotiating the cheese, trying to figure out how to take that first bite without burning the roof of her mouth, when the scythes arrived. Her back was to them, so she didn’t see them at first. But she heard them—or at least one of them.
“Good aernoon, good people,” he said. “Your lives are about to change in a fundamental way.”
Esme turned to see them. Four of them. ey were clad in bright robes that glittered. ey looked like no one Esme had ever seen. She had never met a scythe. She was fascinated. Until three of them pul ed out weapons
that glistened even more than their bejeweled robes, and the fourth pul ed out a flamethrower.
“is food court has been selected for gleaning,” their leader said. And they began their terrible mission.
Esme knew what she had to do. Forgetting her pizza, she dropped beneath the table and crawled away. But she wasn’t the only one. It seemed everyone had dropped and was scrambling on the floor. It didn’t seem to faze the scythes. She could see their feet through the crawling crowd. e fact that their victims were on al fours did not slow them down in the least.
Now Esme began to panic. She had heard stories of scythes who did mass gleanings, but until now she thought they were nothing but stories.
Before her she could see the robes of the scythe in yel ow, so she doubled back, only to find the scythe in green closing in. Esme crawled through a gap in the tables and between two potted palms that the scythe in orange had set on fire, and when she emerged on the other side of the large pots, she found herself with no cover.
She was at the food concessions now. e man who had served her pizza was slumped over the counter, dead. ere was a gap between a trash can and the wal . She was not a slim girl, so she thought the skinniest thoughts she could, and squeezed her way into the gap. It was not much of a hiding space, but if she le it, she would be right in the line of fire. She had already seen two people trying to dart across the walkway and both were taken down by steel crossbow arrows. She didn’t dare move. So instead, she buried her face in her hands. She stayed that way, sobbing, listening to the terrible sounds around her, until silence fel . Stil she refused to open her eyes until she heard a man say, “Hel o there.”
Esme opened her eyes to see the lead scythe—the one in blue—standing over her.
“Please . . .” she begged, “please, don’t glean me.”
e man held out his hand to her. “e gleaning is over,” he said. “ere’s no one le but you. Now, take my hand.”
Afraid to refuse, Esme reached out and placed her hand in his, and rose from her hiding place.
“I’ve been looking for you, Esme,” he said.
Esme gasped when she heard him say her name. Why would a scythe be looking for her?
e other three scythes gathered round. None of them raised a weapon at her.“You’l be coming with us now,” the scythe in blue said.
“But . . . but my mother.”
“Your mother knows. I’ve granted her immunity.”
“Real y?”
“Yes, real y.”
en the girl scythe, in emerald green, handed Esme a plate. “I believe this was your pizza.
Esme took it. It was cool enough to eat now. “ank you.”
“Come with us,” said the scythe in blue, “and I promise you from this moment on, your life wil be everything you’ve ever dreamed it could be.”
And so Esme le with the four scythes, thankful to be alive, and trying not to think of the many around her who weren’t. is was certainly not the way she imagined her day would go—but who was she to fight against something that rang so clearly of destiny?
Was there ever a time when people weren’t plagued with boredom? A time when motivation wasn’t so hard to come by?
When I look at news archives from the Age of Mortality, it seems people had more reasons to do the things they did. Life was about forging time, not just passing time.
And those news reports—how exciting they were. Fil ed with al nature of criminal activity. Your neighbor could be a salesperson of il egal chemicals of recreation. Ordinary people would take life without the permission of society. Angry individuals would take possession of vehicles they didn’t own, then lead law enforcement officers in dangerous pursuits on uncontrol ed roadways.
We do have the unsavories nowadays, but they do lit le more than drop occasional pieces of lit er and move shop items to places they don’t belong. No one rages against the system anymore. At most, they just glare at it a bit.
Perhaps this is why the Thunderhead stil al ows a measured amount of economic inequality. It could certainly make sure that everyone had equal wealth—but that would just add to the plague of boredom that afflicts the immortal. Although we al have what we need, we’re stil al owed to strive for the things we want. Of course, no one strives like they did in mortal days, when the inequality was so great people would actual y steal from one another—sometimes ending lives in the process.
I wouldn’t want the return of crime, but I do tire of we scythes being the sole purveyors of fear. It would be nice to have competition.
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
Forbidden Responses
“Dude, I’m tel ing you, it’s al anyone can talk about. Everyone thinks you’re becoming a scythe to take revenge on the school!”
On an mild day in March—on one of the rare aernoons that Scythe Faraday al owed Rowan downtime—Rowan had gone to visit his friend Tyger, who had not splatted once in the past three months. Now they shot hoops at a park just a few blocks away from Rowan’s home—where he wasn’t al owed to visit, and might not have even if he were al owed.
Rowan threw Tyger the bal . “at’s not why I accepted the apprenticeship.”
“I know that, and you know that, but people wil believe whatever they want to believe.” He grinned. “Suddenly I got al sorts of game because I’m your friend. ey think I can get them access to your ring. Immunity talks; death walks.”
e thought of Tyger playing intercessor on his behalf almost made Rowan laugh. He could see Tyger milking that for al it was worth. Probably charging people for the service.
Rowan stole the bal and took a shot. He hadn’t played since before moving in with the scythe, but he found his arm, if not his aim. He was stronger than ever—and had endless stamina, al thanks to his Bokator training.
“So when you get your ring, you are gonna give me immunity, right?”
Tyger took a shot and missed. It was clearly intentional. He was letting Rowan win.
“First of al , I don’t know that he’l choose me to get the ring. And secondly, I can’t give you immunity.”
Tyger looked genuinely shocked. “What? Why not?”
“Isn’t that what friends are for?”
A few other kids came to the court and asked if maybe they wanted to play a pick-up game—but the second they saw Rowan’s armband, they had a change of heart.
“No worries,” the oldest one said. “It’s al yours.”
It was exasperating. “No, we can al play. . . .”
“Naah . . . we’l go somewhere else.”
“I said we can al play!” Rowan insisted—and he saw such fear in the other kid’s eyes, he felt ashamed for pushing.
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” said the other kid. He turned to his friends “You heard the man! Play!”
ey took to the court in earnest, and in earnest played to lose, just as Tyger had. Was this how it would always be? Was he now such an intimidating presence that even his own friends would be afraid to truly chal enge him? e only one who ever chal enged him in any way now was Citra.
Rowan quickly lost interest in the game and le with Tyger, who found it al amusing. “Dude, you’re not lettuce anymore, you’re deadly nightshade.
You’re the mean greens now!”
Tyger was right. If Rowan had told those other kids to get down on al fours and lick the pavement, they would have. It was heady, and horrible, and he didn’t want to think about it.
Rowan didn’t know what possessed him to do what he did next.
Frustration at his isolation maybe—or maybe just wanting to bring a sliver of his old life into his new one.
“Wanna come over and see the scythe’s place?”
Tyger was a little dubious. “Wil he mind?”
“He’s not there,” Rowan told him. “He’s gleaning in another city today. He won’t be home til late.” He knew that Scythe Faraday would blow a brainstem if he found out Rowan had someone over. It made the desire to do it even more enticing. He had been so good, so obedient; it was about time he did something that he wanted to do.
When they arrived, the house was empty. Citra, who also was granted a free aernoon by Scythe Faraday, was out. He had wanted Tyger to meet her, but then thought, What if they happen to like each other? What if Tyger
charms her? He always had a way with girls. He had even convinced a girl to splat with him once, just so he could say, “Girls fal for me—literal y.”
“It’l be like Romeo and Juliet,” he had told her. “Except we get to come back.”
Needless to say, the girl’s parents were livid, and aer she was revived, they forbade her to see Tyger ever again.
Tyger shrugged it off. “What can I say? Her life is a tale told by idiots,”
which, Rowan believed, was a very bad Shakespeare misquote.
e thought of Citra fal ing for Tyger—even just figuratively—made Rowan a bit nauseated.
“is is it?” Tyger said as he looked around the place. “It’s just a house.”
“What did you expect? A secret underground lair?”
“Actual y, yeah. Or something like it. I mean, look at this furniture—I can’t believe he makes you live in this hel hole.”
“It’s not so bad. C’mon, I’l show you something cool.”
He took Tyger to the weapons den, which, as expected, Tyger found truly impressive.
“is is so edge! I’ve never seen so many knives—and are those guns? I’ve only seen pictures!” He took a pistol off the wal and looked in the barrel.
“Don’t do that!”
“Calm down—I’m a splatter, not a blaster.”
Rowan took it away from him anyway, and in the time it took to put it back on the wal , Tyger had taken down a machete and was swishing it through the air.
“ink I could borrow this?”
“Absolutely not!”
“C’mon—he’s got so many, he’l never miss it.”
Tyger, Rowan knew, was the very definition of “bad idea.” at had always been part of the fun of being his friend. But now that was a major liability. Rowan grabbed Tyger’s arm, kicked him behind the knee to buckle his leg, and spun him to the ground—al in a single Bokator move. en he held Tyger’s arm at an unnatural angle, with just enough leverage for it to hurt.
“What the hel !” Tyger said through gritted teeth.
“Drop the machete. Now!”
Tyger did—and just then, they heard the front door being opened.
Rowan let go. “Be quiet,” he said in a power-whisper.
He peeked out the door, but couldn’t see who had come in. “Stay here,” he told Tyger, then he slipped out to find Citra closing the front door behind her. She must have been running, because she wore a workout outfit that was much more revealing than Rowan needed at the moment—it drained far too much blood from his brain. So he focused on her apprentice armband to remind himself that hormonal responses were strictly forbidden. Citra looked up and gave him an obligatory greeting.
“Hey, Rowan.”
“Hey.”
“Something wrong?”
“No.”
“Why are you just standing there?”
“Where should I be standing?”
She rol ed her eyes and went into the bathroom, closing the door. Rowan slipped back into the weapons den.
“Who is it?” asked Tyger. “Is it what’s-her-name? I want to meet your competition. Maybe she’l give me immunity. Or something else.”
“No,” Rowan told him. “It’s Scythe Faraday, and he’l glean you on the spot if he finds you here.”
Suddenly Tyger’s bravado evaporated. “Oh crap! What are we gonna do?”
“Calm down. He’s taking a shower. As long as you’re quiet I can get you out.”ey came out into the hal way. Sure enough, the sound of a shower hissed behind the closed bathroom door.
“He’s washing off the blood?”
“Yeah. ere was a lot of it.” He led Tyger to the front door, and did everything short of pushing him out.
• • •
Aer being an apprentice for nearly three months, Citra couldn’t deny that she wanted to be chosen by Scythe Faraday to receive the ring. As much as she resisted, as much as she told herself this was not the life for her, she had come to see its importance, and how good a scythe she would be. She hadalways wanted to live a life of substance and to make a difference. As a scythe, she would. Yes, she would have blood on her hands, but blood can be a cleansing thing.
It was certainly treated as such in Bokator.
Citra found Black Widow Bokator to be the most physical y demanding thing she had ever done. eir trainer was Scythe Yingxing, who used no weapons but his own hands and feet to glean. He had taken a vow of silence.
It seemed every scythe had surrendered something of themselves—not because they had to but because they chose to—as a way to pay for the lives they took.
“What would you give up?” Rowan once asked Citra. e question made her uncomfortable.
“If I become a scythe, I’m giving up my life, aren’t I? I think that’s enough.”
“You’re also giving up a family.” Rowan reminded her.
She nodded, not wanting to speak to it. e idea of having a family was so far off to her, the idea of not having one felt equal y distant. It was hard to have feelings about something she was years away from even considering.
Besides, such things had to be kept far from her mind during Bokator. One’s mind had to be clear.
Citra had never taken any sort of martial art before. She had always been a non-contact sport kind of girl. Track, swimming, tennis—any sport that had a clear lane line or net between her and her opponent. Bokator was the antithesis of that. Hand to hand, body to body combat. Even communication was entirely physical in the class, as their mute instructor would correct their positions as if they were action figures. It was al mind and body, without the brash mediation of words.
ere were eight in their class, and although their instructor was a scythe, Citra and Rowan were the only apprentices. e others were junior scythes, in the first years of their scythehood. ere was one other girl, who made no overtures of friendship to Citra. e girls were given no special treatment, and were expected to be every bit the equal of the boys.
Sparring was punishing in Bokator. Each match began simply enough, with a ritualistic strutting around the circle, the two combatants physical y taunting each other in a sort of aggressive dance. en things got serious, and brutal. Al nature of kicks and punches and body slams.
Today she sparred against Rowan. He had more finesse to his moves, but she had the advantage of speed. He was stronger, but he was also tal er, which was not an asset. Citra’s lower center of gravity made her more stable.
Al taken into account, they were evenly matched.
She spun and gave Rowan a powerful kick to the chest that almost took him down.
“Good one,” Rowan said. Scythe Yingxing zipped his own lip to remind them that there was no cross talk during combat.
She came at him from his le, and he countered so quickly, she had no idea where his hand had come from. It was as if he suddenly had three. She was thrown off-balance, but only for an instant. She felt heat where his hand had connected with her side. ere’l be a bruise. She grinned. He’l pay for that! She feinted le again, then came at him from the right with the ful force of her body. She took him down and had him pinned—but it was as if gravity reversed, and suddenly she realized he had turned the tables. Now he was on top, pinning her. She could have flipped him again—she had the leverage—but she didn’t do it. She could feel his heartbeat now as if it were beating in her own chest . . . and she realized she wanted to feel that a little longer. She wanted to feel it more than she wanted to win the match.
at made her angry. Angry enough to pul away from his grip and put some space between them. ere was no lane line, no net, nothing to keep them apart but the wal of her wil . But that wal kept losing bricks.
Scythe Yingxing signaled the end of the match. Citra and Rowan bowed to each other, then took their places on opposite sides of the circle as two others were cal ed up to spar. Citra watched intently, determined not to give Rowan a single glance.
We are not the same beings we once were.
Consider our inability to grasp literature and most entertainment from the mortal age. To us, the things that stirred mortal human emotions are incomprehensible. Only stories of love pass through our post-mortal filter, yet even then, we are baffled by the intensity of longing and loss that threatens those mortal tales of love.
We could blame it on our emo-nanites limiting our despair, but it runs far deeper than that. Mortals fantasized that love was eternal and its loss unimaginable. Now we know that neither is true. Love remained mortal, while we became eternal. Only scythes can equalize that, but everyone knows the chance of being gleaned in this, or even the next mil ennium is so low as to be ignored.
We are not the same beings we once were.
So then, if we are no longer human, what are we?
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
Indiscretions
Citra and Rowan were not always together at gleanings. Sometimes Scythe Faraday took just one of them. e worst gleaning Citra witnessed took place in early May, just a week before Vernal Conclave—the first of three conclaves she and Rowan would attend during their apprenticeship.
eir quarry was a man who had just turned the corner and reset his age to twenty-four. He was at home having dinner with his wife and two kids, who seemed to be around Citra’s age. When Scythe Faraday announced who they had come for, the family wept, and the man slipped off into a bedroom.
Scythe Faraday had chosen a peaceful bloodletting for the man, but that was not what happened. When Citra and the scythe entered the room, he ambushed them. e man was in peak condition, and in the arrogance of his new rejuvenation, he rejected his gleaning and fought the scythe, breaking his jaw with a vicious punch. Citra came to his aid, trying some Bokator moves she had learned from Scythe Yingxing—and quickly learned that applying a martial art is much different from practice in a dojo. e man swatted her away and advanced on Faraday, who was stil reeling from his injury.
Citra leaped on him again, clinging to him, for the moment giving up on anything beyond eye gouging and hair pul ing. It distracted him just long enough for Scythe Faraday to pul out a hunting knife he had concealed in his robe and slit the man’s throat. He began gasping for air, his hands to his neck trying futilely to hold back the flow of blood.
And Scythe Faraday, holding a hand to his own swel ing jaw, spoke to him—not with malice but with great sorrow. “Do you understand the consequences of what you’ve done?”
e man could not answer. He fel to the ground quivering, gasping.
Citra thought death from such a wound would be instantaneous, but apparently not. She had never seen so much blood.
“Stay here,” the scythe told her. “Look upon him kindly and be the last thing he sees.”
en he le the room. Citra knew what he was going to do. e law was very clear as to the consequences of running from or resisting one’s gleaning. She couldn’t close her eyes, because she was instructed not to, but if there was a way, she wished she could have closed her ears, because she knew what she was about to hear from the living room.
It began with pleas from the woman begging for the lives of her children, and the children sobbing in despair.
“Do not beg!” Citra heard the scythe say sharply. “Show these children more courage than your husband did.”
Citra kept her gaze fixed on the dying man’s until his eyes final y emptied of life. en she went to join Scythe Faraday, steeling herself for what was to come.
e two children were on the sofa, their sobs having degraded into tearful whimpers. e woman was on her knees whispering to them, comforting them.
“Are you quite done?” the scythe said impatiently.
At last the woman rose. Her eyes were tearful, but they no longer seemed pleading. “Do what you have to do,” she said.
“Good,” said the scythe. “I applaud your fortitude. Now, as it happens, your husband did not resist his gleaning.” en he touched his swel ing face.
“However, my apprentice and I had an altercation, resulting in these wounds.”
e woman just stared at him, her jaw slightly unhinged. So was Citra’s.
e scythe turned to Citra and glared at her. “My apprentice shal be severely disciplined for fighting with me.” en he turned back to the woman. “Please kneel.”
e woman fel to her knees, not so much a kneel as a col apse.
Scythe Faraday held out his ring to her. “As is customary, you and your children shal receive immunity from gleaning for one year henceforth. Each of you, please kiss my ring.”
e woman kissed it again, and again, and again.
e scythe said little aer they le. ey rode a bus, because whenever possible the scythe avoided the use of a publicar. He saw it as an extravagance.
When they got off at their stop, Citra dared to speak.
“Shal I be disciplined for breaking your jaw?” Citra knew it would be healed by morning, but the healing nanites were not spontaneous. He stil looked pretty awful.
“You wil speak to no one of this,” he told her sternly. “You wil not even comment on it in your journal, is that clear? e man’s indiscretion shal never be known.”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
She wanted to tel him how much she admired him for what he had done.
Choosing compassion over obligation. ere was a lesson to be learned in every gleaning, and today’s was one she would not soon forget. e sanctity of the law . . . and the wisdom to know when it must be broken.
• • •
Citra, try as she might to be a stel ar apprentice, was not immune to indiscretion herself. One of Citra’s nightly chores was to bring Scythe Faraday a glass of warm milk before bed. “As in my childhood, warm milk smooths the edges of the day,” the scythe had told her. “I have, however, dispensed with the cookie that once came with it.”e thought of a scythe having milk and cookies before bed bordered on absurd to Citra. But she supposed even an agent of death would have guilty pleasures.
Quite oen, however, when a gleaning had been difficult, he would fal sleep before she came into his room at the appointed time with the milk. In those cases she would drink it herself, or give it to Rowan, because Scythe Faraday made it clear that nothing in his household was ever wasted.
On the night of that awful gleaning, she lingered in his room a bit longer.
“Scythe Faraday,” she said gently. en said it again. No response. She could tel by his breathing he was out.
ere was an object on the nightstand. In fact, it was there every night.
It caught the oblique light spil ing in from the hal way. Even in the dim room it glittered.
She downed the glass of milk and set it on the nightstand, so that in the morning the scythe would see she had brought it and that it hadn’t been wasted. en she knelt there, her eyes fixed on the ring. She wondered why he never slept with it, but felt that asking would be some sort of intrusion.
When she received hers—if she received hers—would it retain the solemn mystery that it held for her now, or would it become ordinary to her? Would she come to take it for granted?
She reached forward, then drew her hand back. en reached forward again and gently took the ring. She turned it in her fingers so that it caught the light. e stone was big; about the size of an acorn. It was said to be a diamond, but there was a darkness in its core that made it different from a simple diamond ring. ere was something in the core of that ring, but no one knew what it was. She wondered if even the scythes themselves knew.
e center wasn’t exactly black—it was a deep discoloration that looked different depending on the light—the way a person’s eyes sometimes do.