The Toll

by Neal Shusterman

  Greyson’s only respite from reverence was Sister Astrid, who, in spite of her fervent belief that he was a prophet, didn’t treat him like one. She saw it as her mission, though, to engage him in spiritual conversation and open his heartstrings to the truth of Tonism. There was only so much talk of Universal Harmonies and Sacred Arpeggios he could stand. He wanted to bring some non-Tonists into his inner circle, but Mendoza wouldn’t have it.

  “You must be careful who you associate with,” Mendoza insisted. “With scythes increasingly targeting Tonists, we don’t know who we can trust.”

  “The Thunderhead knows who I can and can’t trust,” Greyson said, which just annoyed him.

  Mendoza never stopped moving. As a monastic curate, he had been quiet and reflective, but he had changed. He had reverted to the marketing guru he had been before becoming a Tonist. “The Tone put me where I was needed, when I was needed,” he once said, then added, “All rejoice!” Although Greyson could never be sure whether he was being genuine when he said that. Even when he ran religious services, his “all rejoice” always seemed to come with a wink.

  Mendoza would stay in constant communication with curates around the world by secretly piggybacking on scythedom servers. “They’re the most unregulated, least monitored systems in the world.”

  There was something both satisfying and troubling to know that they were using the scythedom’s own servers to carry their secret messages to Tonist curates around the world.

  * * *

  Greyson’s private suite was a true sanctuary. It was the only place where the Thunderhead could speak aloud and not just through his earpiece. There was a freedom to that more palpable than removing the stiff garments of the Toll. The earpiece he wore in public made the Thunderhead feel like a voice in his head. It only spoke to him aloud when it knew no one else could hear, and when it did, he felt surrounded by it. He was in it, rather than it in him.

  “Talk to me,” he said to the Thunderhead as he stretched out on the comfort of his bed—a massive thing constructed specially for him by a follower who made mattresses by hand. Why did people think that just because the Toll was now larger-than-life, everything within his life had to be? The bed was big enough for a small army. Honestly, what did they expect him to do in it? Even on the rare occasions that he had “the company of a guest,” as the curates so tactfully put it, it felt like they had to drop breadcrumbs to find each other.

  Mostly he was alone when he lay upon it. That left him with two choices. He could either feel insignificant and solitary, swallowed by the billowing expanse of it—or he could try to remember what it was like to be a baby laid out in the middle of his parents’ bed, safe, comfortable, and loved. Certainly his parents had done that for him at least once before they tired of parenthood.

  “I’d be happy to talk, Greyson,” the Thunderhead replied. “What shall we discuss?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Greyson said. “Small talk, big talk, in-between talk.”

  “Shall we discuss your following, and how it’s growing?”

  Greyson rolled over. “You really know how to kill a mood, you know that? No, I don’t want to talk about anything having to do with the Toll.” Greyson crawled to the edge of the bed and grabbed the plate of cheesecake he had brought with him from dinner. If the Thunderhead was going to talk about his life as the Toll, he definitely needed some comfort food to help it go down.

  “The growth of the Tonist movement is a good thing,” the Thunderhead said. “It means that when we need to mobilize them, they will be a force to be reckoned with.”

  “You sound like you’re going to war.”

  “I’m hoping that won’t be necessary.”

  And that’s all the Thunderhead had to say about it. From the beginning, it was cryptic about how it might use the Tonists. It made Greyson feel like a confidant who wasn’t being confided in.

  “I don’t like being used without knowing your endgame,” he said, and to emphasize his disapproval, he moved to the one spot in the room he knew the Thunderhead’s cameras had trouble seeing.

  “You’ve found a blind spot,” it said. “Perhaps you know more than you’re letting on.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  The air-conditioning blew stronger for a brief moment. The Thunderhead’s version of a sigh. “I will tell you once things congeal, but right now there are obstacles I must overcome before I can even calculate the odds that my plan for humanity will succeed.”

  Greyson found it absurd that the Thunderhead could say something like “my plan for humanity” in the same unconcerned way a person might say “my recipe for cheesecake.”

  Which, by the way, was terrible. Void of flavor, and gelatinous rather than creamy. Tonists believed that hearing was the only sense worth indulging. But someone apparently had read the look on Greyson’s face while he tried to eat a particularly miserable babka, and the staff was scrambling to find a new dessert chef. That was the thing about being the Toll. You raised an eyebrow, and mountains moved, whether you wanted them to or not.

  “Are you displeased with me, Greyson?” the Thunderhead asked.

  “You basically run the world—why should you care if I’m displeased?”

  “Because I do,” the Thunderhead said. “I care very much.”

  * * *

  “You will treat the Toll with absolute reverence no matter what he tells you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Step far out of his way if you see him approaching.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Always cast your eyes downward in his presence, and bow low.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Sister Astrid, who now served as the Cloisters’ chief of staff, looked the new pastry chef over carefully. She squinted as if it helped her see into his soul. “From where do you hail?”

  “BrotherlyLove,” he told her.

  “Well, I hope your head isn’t as cracked as the Liberty Bell. Clearly, you must have distinguished yourself to your curate to be recommended for service to the Toll.”

  “I’m the best at what I do,” he told her. “Hands down, the best.”

  “A Tonist without modesty,” she said with a wry grin. “Some of the sibilant sects would cut your tongue out for that.”

  “The Toll is too wise for that, ma’am.”

  “That he is,” she agreed. “That he is.” Then she reached out her hand unexpectedly and squeezed his right bicep. The new arrival tensed it reflexively.

  “Strong. By the looks of you, I’m surprised they didn’t assign you to security detail.”

  “I’m a pastry chef,” he told her. “The only weapon I wield is an eggbeater.”

  “But you would fight for him if you were asked?”

  “Whatever the Toll needs, I’m there.”

  “Good,” she said, satisfied. “Well, what he needs from you now is tonight’s dessert.” Then she had someone from the culinary staff show him to the kitchen.

  He grinned as he was led out. He had made it through the chief of staff’s inspection. Sister Astrid was known to throw out new arrivals she didn’t care for, no matter how highly recommended they came. But he’d measured up to her high standards. Scythe Morrison couldn’t be happier.

  * * *

  “I am thinking that traveling might be a good course of action at this juncture,” the Thunderhead told Greyson that evening, before he removed his vestments and could relax. “I am thinking this in the strongest of ways.”

  “I already told you I’m not doing a world tour,” Greyson told it. “The world comes to me one person at a time. I’m fine with it that way, and until now it’s what you’ve wanted, too.”

  “I’m not suggesting a world tour, but perhaps an unannounced pilgrimage to places you have not been. Shouldn’t it be known that the Toll traveled the world, as prophets have historically done?”

  Greyson Tolliver, however, had never suffered from wanderlust. Until his life had been derailed
, his hope was to serve the Thunderhead as a Nimbus agent close to home—and if not, then in a single place that would become his home. As far as he was concerned, Lenape City was as much of the world as he needed to see.

  “It was merely a suggestion. But I believe it to be an important one,” the Thunderhead told him. It was not like the Thunderhead to be insistent when Greyson had made his feelings clear on a matter. Perhaps there would come a time when he would have to uproot himself to help bring the sibilant factions in line, but why now?

  “I’ll consider it,” Greyson said, just to end the conversation. “But right now I need to take a bath and stop thinking about stressful things.”

  “Of course,” said the Thunderhead. “I’ll draw it for you.”

  But the bath the Thunderhead drew was much too hot. Greyson endured it without saying anything, but what was the Thunderhead thinking? Was it punishing him in some passive-aggressive way for not wanting to travel? The Thunderhead wasn’t like that. What possible reason could it have for putting him in hot water?

  * * *

  The new pastry chef was supposed to be a culinary genius. And he was. Or at least he was until Scythe Morrison gleaned him and took his place. The truth was, three weeks ago, Scythe Morrison could barely boil water, much less bake a soufflé—but a crash course in dessert making gave him enough basics to fake his way through the short time he needed—and he even had developed a few specialties. He made a mean tiramisu and killer strawberry cheesecake.

  He was nervous the first couple of days, and although his inexperienced hands bumbled quite a lot in the kitchen, it turned out to be an effective smoke screen. All new servants here were nervous when they arrived—and, thanks to the severe eye of Sister Astrid, they remained nervous for their entire tenure. Morrison’s awkwardness around the kitchen would be read as normal under the circumstances.

  Eventually they’d realize that he wasn’t the chef they thought he was, but he didn’t have to keep up the charade for long. And when he was done, all these nervous little Tonists would be freed from service. Because the holy man they served was about to be gleaned.

  * * *

  “The Thunderhead has been behaving strangely,” Greyson told Sister Astrid, who dined with him that night. There was always someone there to dine with, because they didn’t want the Toll to ever have to dine alone. Last night it was a visiting curate from Antarctica. The night before it was a woman who created graceful tuning forks for home altars. Rarely was it someone who Greyson actually wanted to dine with, and rarely could he be Greyson. He had to be “on” as the Toll at every meal. Annoying, because his vestments stained easily and were virtually impossible to get as clean as the role demanded, so they were constantly being replaced. He would much prefer to dine in jeans and a T-shirt, but he feared he’d never have that luxury again.

  “What do you mean ‘strangely’?” Sister Astrid asked.

  “Repeating itself,” Greyson said. “Doing things that are… unwanted. It’s kind of hard to put my finger on. It’s just… not itself.”

  Astrid shrugged. “The Thunderhead’s the Thunderhead—it behaves the way it behaves.”

  “Spoken like a true Tonist,” Greyson said. He hadn’t meant it as mocking, but Astrid took it that way.

  “What I mean is that the Thunderhead is a constant. If there’s something it’s doing that doesn’t make sense to you, then maybe you’re the problem.”

  Greyson grinned. “You’ll make an excellent curate one day, Astrid.”

  The server put dessert before them. Strawberry cheesecake.

  “You should try it,” Astrid told Greyson. “And tell me if it’s any better than the last chef’s.”

  Greyson took a small piece on his fork and tasted it. It was perfect.

  “Wow,” he told Astrid. “We finally have a decent dessert chef!”

  If nothing else, it purged the Thunderhead from his mind for the few minutes it took to devour it.

  * * *

  Scythe Morrison understood why the gleaning of the Toll needed to be done bloodlessly, and from the inside, rather than a frontal attack. The Tonists guarding the Toll would die for their prophet and were well armed with illegal mortal-age weaponry. They would fight back in ways that ordinary people didn’t—so even if an assassination team were successful, the world would know the resistance the Tonists put up. The world must never see that level of resistance against the scythedom. Until now, the best course of action was to just ignore the Toll’s existence. The scythedoms of the world hoped that by treating him as insignificant, he would be insignificant. But apparently he had become important enough for Goddard to desire his removal. To keep it from being some high-profile, overwrought event, a one-man infiltration was the best way to do it.

  The beauty of the plan rested on the Tonists’ own self-confidence. They had vetted the new pastry chef extensively before he was approved for the job. It was so easy to alter Morrison’s ID and simply slip into the man’s shoes after the Tonists were sure it was safe.

  He had to admit he was enjoying his position and liked baking much more than he thought he would. Maybe he’d make it his hobby once his business here was done. Hadn’t Scythe Curie cooked meals for the families of those she’d gleaned? Perhaps Scythe Morrison could make them dessert.

  “Be sure to always bake extra,” the sous chef had advised him on his first day there. “The Toll gets the munchies during the night. And it’s usually for something sweet.”

  Priceless information.

  “In that case,” Morrison had said, “I’ll be sure to make desserts that he can’t get enough of.”

  A Testament of the Toll

  The Toll faced countless enemies, both in this life and beyond it. When the harbinger of death breached his sanctuary, and wrapped its cold hand around his throat, he refused to yield. Clothed in the rough-and-weathered blue shroud of the grave, death dug its talons into him, and yea, though it stole his earthly existence, it was not the Toll’s end. Instead, he was elevated above this world to a higher octave. All rejoice!

  Commentary of Curate Symphonius

  Do not be misled—death itself is not the enemy, for it is our belief that natural death must come to all in their time. Unnatural death is that of which this verse speaks. It is another reference to scythes, which most assuredly did exist—supernatural beings who devoured the souls of the living in order to gain dark magical powers. That the Toll could fight such beings is evidence of his own divinity.

  Coda’s Analysis of Symphonius

  There is no disputing that scythes existed in the time of the Toll, and for all we know they may still exist in the Places Behind. However, to suggest that they devoured souls is a stretch even for Symphonius, who tends to prefer hearsay and conjecture to evidence. It is important to note that scholars have reached a general consensus that scythes did not devour the souls of their victims. They merely consumed their flesh.

  23 How to Glean a Holy Man

  The Toll was not supposed to tread the halls and courtyards of the Cloisters alone. The curates were constantly telling Greyson this. They were like overprotective parents. Did he have to remind them that there were dozens of guards around the perimeter and on the rooftops? That the Thunderhead’s cameras were constantly watching? What the hell were they worried about?

  It was a little past two a.m. when Greyson rolled out of bed and put his slippers on.

  “What’s wrong, Greyson?” the Thunderhead said, even before he was fully out of bed. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  More strangeness. It was unlike the Thunderhead to speak without provocation.

  “Just having trouble sleeping,” he told it.

  “Perhaps it’s intuition,” the Thunderhead said. “Perhaps you’re sensing something unpleasant that you can’t quite put your finger on.”

  “The only thing unpleasant that I can’t put my finger on lately is you.”

  The Thunderhead had no response to that.

  “If yo
u’re unsettled, might I suggest a long-distance journey to calm your nerves?”

  “What, right now? In the middle of the night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just up and leave?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would that calm my nerves?”

  “It would be… a wise course of action at this juncture.”

  Greyson sighed and moved toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” the Thunderhead asked.

  “Where do you think? To get something to eat.”

  “Do not forget to take your earpiece.”

  “Why? So I can listen to you nagging at me?”

  The Thunderhead hesitated for a moment, then said, “I promise I will not. But you need to wear it. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough.”

  “Fine.”

  Greyson grabbed the earpiece from his nightstand and slipped it into his ear, if only to shut the Thunderhead up.

  * * *

  The Toll was always kept at a distance from most of the staff. Morrison suspected he had no idea how many people worked behind the scenes of his “simple” life, because they always scurried like mice when they saw him coming. To the Toll, a fortress manned by dozens upon dozens of people appeared to be mostly deserted. It was as the curates wanted it. “The Toll needs his privacy. The Toll needs peace to be alone with his own great thoughts.”

  Late each night, Morrison could be found in the kitchen, making sauces, preparing batters for the morning pastries, but the real reason was so that he’d be in the kitchen when the Toll came down for a midnight snack.

  Finally, five days in, his opportunity came.