The Toll

by Neal Shusterman

  His gaze became even more intrusive. Not judgmental, but possessing a deeper sight. A bit like the Thunderhead itself.

  “Hiding out with the Tonists was your suggestion—or did you forget that?”

  “No, I remember,” she told him, “but I never thought you’d stay. I never thought you’d become their prophet.” She looked over his vestments. “I can’t decide whether you look ridiculous or regal.”

  “Both,” he told her. “The trick is convincing people that strange clothing makes you something more than ordinary. But you know all about that, don’t you?”

  Anastasia had to admit he was right. The world treated you differently—defined you differently—when you wore robes or regalia.

  “Just as long as you don’t believe it yourself,” she told him.

  “When I take all this off, I’m still Greyson Tolliver,” he said.

  “And when I slip out of this robe, I’m still Citra Terranova.”

  He smiled broadly at that. “I never knew your given name until now. Citra. I like it.”

  Hearing him say her name gave her a sudden wash of nostalgia. A yearning for a time before all this. “There aren’t many people who call me that anymore.”

  He looked at her wistfully. “Funny, but it was never easy for me to talk to you before. Now it’s easier than talking with anyone else. I think we’ve become alike in a lot of ways.”

  She laughed at that. Not because it was funny, but because it was true. The rest of the world saw them both as symbols. Intangible light to guide them in the darkness. She understood now why ancient peoples turned their heroes into constellations.

  “You haven’t told me why you wanted an audience with the Toll.”

  “Scythe Possuelo thinks you know a safe place where Goddard won’t find us,” Anastasia said.

  “Well, if the Thunderhead knows of a place like that, it hasn’t told me. But then there’s a lot of things it doesn’t tell me.”

  “It’s all right,” said Anastasia. “Possuelo just wants to protect me, but I don’t want to hide.”

  “What do you want?” Greyson asked.

  What did she want? Citra Terranova wanted to shed her robe, seek out her family, and argue with her brother about unimportant things. But Scythe Anastasia wouldn’t have any of that.

  “I want to bring down Goddard,” she said. “I’ve been able to place him on Mars at the time of the disaster, but being there doesn’t prove he caused it.”

  “He survived Mars, and he survived Endura,” said Greyson. “Suspicious but not incriminating.”

  “Exactly, which is why there’s someone else I need to find,” Anastasia said. “Have you ever heard of Scythe Alighieri?”

  * * *

  Possuelo had to leave them that afternoon. He was called back to Amazonia by his High Blade.

  “Tarsila gives me lots of leeway—especially when my salvage venture brought forth you,” he told Anastasia, “but when word got out that I had brought our artist friend to SubSahara, she demanded my return, lest we be accused of conspiring with Tonists.” He sighed. “We are a very tolerant region, but after the attack on Tenkamenin’s palace, even the most accepting regions are cooling to Tonists—and our High Blade doesn’t want bad publicity.”

  Several Tonists passed in the cavern behind them. They bowed, reverently saying “Your Honors,” some of their voices still a little slurred, as it was the first week with their new tongues. It was hard to believe that these were the same violent, crazed Sibilants who had murdered Tenkamenin. Greyson—the Toll, that is—had turned them and brought them back from that awful edge of their own humanity. Anastasia could not forgive them, but she found an ability to coexist with them.

  “People are vessels,” Jeri had said to her. “They hold whatever’s poured into them.”

  And apparently Greyson had drained them and refilled them with something far more palatable.

  Possuelo said his goodbye at the entrance to the cave. “This place is isolated, and if the Toll truly is under the protection of the Thunderhead, you’ll be safe with him,” he told her. “It’s not exactly the sanctuary I was looking for, but who knows if that place even exists. Rumors aren’t worth the air they’re whispered on.”

  “I’m hoping the Toll will help me find Alighieri.”

  “I doubt he even exists anymore,” Possuelo lamented. “He was ancient when I was an apprentice, and I am, as you say, no spring chicken.”

  He laughed and embraced her. If felt comforting. Fatherly. Until she was in his embrace, she hadn’t realized how much she missed that. It made her think of her family once more. She had not tried to contact them since her revival, as Possuelo had advised her against it. They were safe and protected in a friendly region, he had assured her. Perhaps there would come a time for that reunion, or perhaps she’d never see them again. Either way, there was still too much to be done for her to even think about it.

  “Say goodbye to Captain Soberanis for me,” Possuelo said. “I take it Jerico is staying on.”

  “As you ordered,” Anastasia said.

  Possuelo raised an eyebrow. “I never gave such an order,” he said. “Jerico does as Jerico pleases. That the good captain has forsaken the sea, and has chosen to be your protector, says a lot about both of you.” He embraced her one final time. “Take care, meu anjo.” Then he turned and strode toward his transport that waited in a clearing.

  * * *

  Ezra the artist, who Possuelo saw fit to set free, took to painting a mural to fill one of the larger caverns. It tickled him that this could become a pilgrimage destination for future Tonists, if indeed there would be any future Tonists, and that his cave paintings might be endlessly analyzed by scholars of tomorrow. He introduced some odd elements just to confuse them. A dancing bear, a five-eyed boy, and an eleven-hour clock missing the number 4.

  “What’s life if you can’t mess with the future?” he said.

  He asked the Toll if he remembered him, and Greyson told him that he did. It was a half-truth. Greyson remembered Ezra’s audience with him, because it had been a turning point for Greyson as well. The first time he gave advice rather than just being a mouthpiece for the Thunderhead. But he had no memory at all of Ezra’s face.

  “Ah, the wonderful limitations of the biological brain!” the Thunderhead said wistfully. “The remarkable ability to dispense with the unnecessary, rather than filing every little thing into a cumbersome compendium!” The Thunderhead called humanity’s selective memory “the gift of forgetting.”

  There were many things Greyson had forgotten that he wished he could remember. Most of his childhood. Any warm moments with his parents. And there were things he remembered that he wished he could forget. Like the look on Purity’s face when Scythe Constantine gleaned her.

  He knew the gift of forgetting was now a bane to Anastasia, because the world seems to have forgotten Scythe Alighieri. But the Thunderhead hadn’t. Alighieri was there in its cumbersome compendium of human history. Getting to that information was the problem.

  The Thunderhead had been silent for his entire conversation with Anastasia. Then, after she had retired to the cave to join her comrades, it finally spoke up. “I cannot, in any way, help Anastasia find the man she’s looking for.”

  “But you do know where he can be found, don’t you?”

  “I do. But it would be a violation for me to communicate his location to her.”

  “Can you tell me?”

  “I could,” said the Thunderhead, “but if you then tell her, I will be forced to mark you unsavory, and then where would we be?”

  Greyson sighed. “There must be a work-around….”

  “Perhaps,” said the Thunderhead. “But I can’t help you find it.”

  Work-arounds. The Thunderhead had used him as one back when he was a naive Nimbus Academy student. And come to think of it, he remembered learning about an official work-around in one of his early classes at the academy, before he got himself expelled. There was a sort
of ritualistic practice that allowed a Nimbus agent to speak with a scythe without breaking the law. A trialogue it was called. It involved a professional go-between who was well versed in scythe/state protocols. What could, and could not, be said.

  What they needed, Greyson realized, was a go-between.

  * * *

  In his private cavern spread with rugs and hung with tapestries, the Toll sat on one of the many pillows strewn about the space, facing Jerico Soberanis.

  Greyson estimated he and Soberanis were roughly the same age. That is unless the salvage captain had turned a corner, but Greyson didn’t think so. The young captain didn’t seem to be the type who would set back so far. Still, there was something noble there. Not so much wisdom, but worldliness. Greyson had been all over the world yet saw so little of it in his protective cocoon, he felt like he’d been nowhere at all. But Jerico Soberanis had truly seen the world, and what was more, knew the world. It was something to be admired.

  “Scythe Anastasia explained why you called for me,” Soberanis said. “How will this work, Your… What is it they call you?”

  “Your Sonority,” Greyson said.

  “That’s right, ‘Your Sonority,’ ” Soberanis said with a smirk.

  “You think it’s funny?”

  The smirk didn’t leave the salvage captain’s face. “Did you come up with that?”

  “No. My chief curate did.”

  “He ought to be in advertising.”

  “He was.”

  The conversation lagged. Not surprising. This was entirely artificial and forced, but it needed to happen.

  “Say something,” Greyson told the salvage captain.

  “What sort of thing should I say?”

  “It doesn’t matter what you talk about. We just need to have a conversation. Then I’ll pose questions to the Thunderhead about the conversation.”

  “And?”

  “And it will answer.”

  Jerico smiled again. Mischievous. Alluring in an odd sort of way. “A game of chess, then, where all the pieces are invisible!”

  “If you like,” said Greyson.

  “Very well.” Jerico took a moment to consider their subject matter, then said something Greyson was not expecting.

  “You and I have something in common.”

  “What would that be?”

  “We both sacrificed our lives to save Scythe Anastasia.”

  Greyson shrugged. “It was only temporary.”

  “Still,” said Soberanis, “it takes courage and a remarkable leap of faith to do so.”

  “Not really. People splat every day.”

  “Yes, but neither of us are that sort. To render ourselves deadish goes against our basic natures. Not everyone would have made the choice we made. This is how I know that you are much more than that outfit you wear.” Soberanis smiled again. This time it was genuine. Honest. Greyson had never met someone with such a wide variety of smiles. Each one spoke volumes.

  “Thank you,” said Greyson. “I suppose our mutual admiration of Scythe Anastasia does… bond us in a way.” He waited to see if the Thunderhead would say anything at all, but it didn’t. It was waiting to be asked. Greyson still didn’t know what to ask it.

  “I hope this isn’t insulting,” Greyson said, “but I’m not sure how I should address you. As Mr. or Ms. Soberanis?”

  The salvage captain glanced around the cavern and became noticeably uncomfortable. “I’m at a bit of a loss. I very rarely find myself in a place where I can’t see the sky.”

  “Why should that matter?”

  “I suppose it shouldn’t… I am always out of doors, or intentionally near a window or skylight… but here in a cave…”

  Greyson still didn’t understand, and the captain became just the tiniest bit miffed. “I will never understand how you binaries are so attached to your birth plumbing. Why should it matter whether a person has ovaries, or testicles, or both?”

  “It doesn’t,” Greyson said, feeling a little flustered. “I mean… it does matter for some things… doesn’t it?”

  “You tell me.”

  Greyson found he couldn’t look away from that gaze. “Maybe… it doesn’t matter as much as I thought?” He hadn’t meant to pose it as a question. But it made no difference, because Jerico was not giving him an answer.

  “Why don’t you just call me Jeri, and we don’t have to worry about technicalities.”

  “All right! Jeri it is. Let’s begin.”

  “I thought we already had. Is it my move?” Jeri feigned moving an imaginary chess piece forward, then said, “I very much like your eyes. I see how they can persuade people to follow you.”

  “I don’t think my eyes have anything to do with that.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  Greyson pressed his earpiece deeper in his ear. “Thunderhead—do my eyes influence people to follow me?”

  “Yes, on occasion,” the Thunderhead responded. “They can be helpful when all else fails.”

  Greyson found himself blushing in spite of himself. Jeri read it and offered a new variation on that grin.

  “So the Thunderhead agrees with me.”

  “Maybe.”

  Greyson had entered this whole thing assuming he would be in control of the conversation, but clearly he was not. And yet he was beginning to grin as well. He was sure, though, that he only had one grin, and that it looked profoundly stupid.

  “Tell me about Madagascar,” he asked, shifting the focus away from himself.

  Jeri’s demeanor immediately changed with thoughts of home. “My region is beautiful—the mountains, the beaches, the forests. The people are kind, gentle, and accepting. You should see Antananarivo—our capital city—and the way the sun hits the hills at sunset!”

  “Thunderhead,” said Greyson, “tell me something interesting about Antananarivo.”

  The Thunderhead spoke, and Greyson listened.

  “What did it say?” Jeri asked.

  “Uh… it told me that the tallest building in Antananarivo is 309.67 meters high, and is exactly the same height as four other buildings in the world, down to the millimeter.”

  Jeri leaned back unimpressed. “Is that the most interesting fact it could find? What about the jacaranda trees around Lake Anosy, or the royal tombs?”

  But Greyson put up his hand to stop Jeri, and thought for a moment. The Thunderhead never said anything without reason. The trick was to read its mind. “Thunderhead, where are those other four buildings—I’m curious.”

  “One in the Chilargentine region,” it told him, “another in Britannia, the third in Israebia, and the fourth in the region of NuZealand.”

  Greyson told Jeri, who was still unimpressed. “I’ve been to all those regions. But home is always the best, I suppose.”

  “Have you been to every region in the world?” Greyson asked.

  “All the ones with a coast,” Jeri said. “I have an aversion to landlocked places.”

  And then the Thunderhead offered a simple, and obvious, opinion—which Greyson shared.

  “The Thunderhead says you’d probably be most at home in regions that feature an island or archipelago roughly the size of Madagascar.” Greyson turned his head a bit—a habit he had when he was speaking to the Thunderhead in the presence of others. “Thunderhead, what regions might that be?”

  But the Thunderhead was silent.

  Greyson grinned. “Nothing… which means we’re on to something!”

  “The ones I can think of off the top of my head,” said Jeri, “are Britannia, Caribbea, the Region of the Rising Sun, NuZealand, and the ’Nesias.”

  “Interesting,” said Greyson.

  “What?”

  “Britannia and NuZealand have come up twice….”

  To that, the Thunderhead was, once more, silent.

  “I’m beginning to like this game,” said Jeri.

  Greyson couldn’t deny that he was, too.

  “What region would you like to live in?”
Jeri asked. “If you had your choice of any in the world?”

  It was a loaded question, and perhaps Jeri knew that. Because everyone else in the world did have that choice. Anyone could live anywhere. But for Greyson it was less of an actual place than a state of mind.

  “I’d want to live in a place where nobody knows me,” he told Jeri.

  “But nobody does know you,” Jeri said. “They know the Toll—but not you. Take me, for instance; I don’t even know your name.”

  “It’s… Greyson.”

  Jeri smiled with the warmth of the Madagascan sun.

  “Hello, Greyson.”

  That simple greeting seemed to both melt him and freeze him at once. Madagascans were known to be charming—perhaps that’s all it was. Or perhaps not. He realized he’d have to unpack it later.

  “For me, I’d never want to be far from the sea,” Jeri said.

  “Thunderhead,” said Greyson, “what are your thoughts on that?”

  And the Thunderhead said, “There is a city or town in every region that is the farthest from the sea. I assume the captain would not care to live in any of those places.”

  “But,” said Greyson, “if they had jacaranda trees like that Madagascan lake, maybe Jeri might feel at home.”

  “Perhaps,” said the Thunderhead.

  And then Greyson made a stealth move. The kind of move one’s opponent wouldn’t see coming. But of course the Thunderhead did. In fact, the Thunderhead welcomed it.

  “Tell me, Thunderhead, what are some of the regions where jacarandas grow.”

  “Although they do best in warmer climates, they grow in almost every region now,” the Thunderhead told him. “Their purple blooms are appreciated around the world.”

  “Yes,” said Greyson. “But can you give me a list of… oh, say… four places where they can be found?”

  “Of course, Greyson. Jacaranda trees can be found in WestMerica, Isthmus, Lower Himalaya, and even in the botanical gardens of Britannia.”

  Jeri studied him. “What is it? What did the Thunderhead say?”