The Tithe

by Elle Hill

  The door slammed inward, and she gasped.

  “Joshua?” Had the hallway light not shone on him, she would not have known him. His voice had twisted into a knot of fear and anger.

  “Blue!” she gasped. “Thank heaven! And . . . would you plug in my lamp? And lock the door?”

  Blue’s hand flashed behind him, and the door locked. It had never occurred to her to lock her door. She’d never, ever done so before. A moment later, watery yellow light swallowed up the blackness. How odd to do it in that order . . . Unless you don’t need the light, dummy, she scolded herself.

  “Are you all right?” Blue demanded.

  “Did you see the person running away?” she asked.

  “No.”

  She stared at him for a moment, mouth agape, before bursting into giggles that racked her torso. “No, of course you didn’t. That was a stupid question.”

  “You’re hurt,” Blue said.

  Josh shook her head and held out her arms to show him how she’d held off the intruder, but Blue was right. Blood streaked across both arms.

  “I’m bleeding,” she mumbled, staring at the blood dribbling down her arms and onto the thin, all-but-useless green blanket. The red liquid plastered her arms hairs against her skin. She rotated her arms, looking at the patterns of blood.

  Blue’s lips pursed. His cheek still bore the bruise he’d gained from fighting with Kann. This place was bad for both of their health.

  “Where are you bleeding?” Blue asked, and she remembered again he couldn’t see.

  Think. Focus.

  “Uh, my arms,” she said. She hadn’t been bitten, of course. The intruder had brandished a knife. “They meant to kill me,” she murmured. Her forearms and hands bore several shallow cuts, and two deep gashes. Blood pooled and seeped. She became aware then of the throbs and stings perforating her arms.

  “Are any of the wounds deep enough to see muscle or bone?” Blue asked.

  Eww. “No.”

  “Let’s use your sheets for bandages,” Blue said.

  She nodded.

  Blue sat down on the bed, and she handed him the sheet. With surprising ease, he shredded it into strips; either the sheets were criminally thin, or he was quite strong. Together, amid her hisses and flinches, they bandaged her arms and her left hand, the knuckles of which had kissed the knife blade.

  Once Blue finished tying off the final bandage, Josh stared dumbly at her mummified arms. Under the white strips, they still stung.

  “I need some aspirin,” she muttered, mesmerized by the weave of the white strips.

  “No. Aspirin thins your blood,” Blue said. She’d heard that somewhere. “What happened?” he asked.

  She looked at him, then. His shoulder-length hair danced in unruly tufts. His eyes gleamed like ice against his dark skin. She had the bizarre thought that she could tell him anything and he would freeze it, keep it safe, hide it from everyone else.

  Josh shook her head. “I woke up to a noise, and someone attacked me.”

  He remained silent, waiting.

  She took a breath. “I thought it was an angel at first,” she whispered.

  Blue reached across her legs and grabbed her unbandaged right hand. She twitched in his grasp, ready to pull away, and then . . . didn’t. Warmth drifted up from her hand, through her chest, beyond her throat, and into her eyes. Moisture that had nothing to do with onions clouded her vision. Her breathing stuttered.

  Blue’s thumb caressed her hand, and she felt as though she’d donned warm clothing—on the inside. Was this what holding hands meant? Who had invented such a thing? It was like plugging oneself into an electrical outlet! She wasn’t sure if she was mortified or delighted. Probably simply overwhelmed.

  Droplets sparkled on her eyelashes. She hadn’t cried since she was fourteen, since she had found out she would become a Tithe.

  “How do you know it wasn’t an angel?” Blue asked, and she swore she could hear some hint of—something—in his normally inflectionless voice.

  “The not flying part helped,” she said shakily. Blue turned his ear toward her in that way he had of showing he paid strict attention. She found it endearing. “Plus, an angel wouldn’t need to st—hurt me like that. And this person smelled. I can’t imagine an angel stinking.”

  They sat in silence for a while. Blue’s thumb caressed her hand. Was it automatic, or was he aware of every stroke? Had he done this before? Why did it command her attention, affect everything from her breathing to her sense of safety?

  “Someone wanted to hurt me,” she said. “I don’t understand. We’re all going to die. Why do this?”

  “If we go check rooms, we can try to figure out who attacked you.” Blue’s eyes never looked icier than they did right then.

  Josh shook her head. “What would we do, Blue? Get a list of each person and cross each one off when we wake them up?”

  “Yes. Marcus will help.” He spoke through tight lips.

  “The person is probably back in their room, pretending to sleep. And even if we found them, what then? We’re all going to die, anyway.” She shook her head and shivered. Finding her attacker was impossible, but it didn’t mean she . . .

  “We kill them,” Blue said.

  “What?!”

  “The person who attacked you,” Blue explained calmly. “We find them and we kill them for trying to kill you.”

  “What? No! We can’t kill a person!”

  “Yes,” Blue said, “we can.”

  She stared at him for a long moment. “Look at me,” she whispered. Not technically possible, but he turned toward her so she could look him fully in the face. He wasn’t kidding, nor was he exaggerating; Blue would kill the person who’d attacked her tonight. Her right hand disentangled itself from his and smoothed over her mouth.

  “We can’t kill,” she said softly, reasonably.

  “I know you can’t,” Blue said. His eyes appeared to stare at her forehead. Such beautiful eyes. And cold. “But I can.”

  “Blue . . .” She stopped. Something inside her stomach trembled.

  He leaned toward her. “Don’t be scared of me,” he said quietly, still in his colorless voice. “I would never hurt you, Joshua.”

  She was pretty sure she believed him. Good thing, since they sat in a locked room together.

  “But you could kill.”

  “Someone who hurt you, yes,” he said flatly. “Whatever it takes to keep you safe.”

  Then she noticed a faint jagged scar bisecting his right cheekbone. She wondered what he’d done, what had happened to him.

  “The Bitoran says not to kill,” she reminded him. It was a prissy thing to say, but she could think of nothing else.

  “Yes.” He reached out to her then, and his hand touched her face. His fingers were warm against her cheek. “I never said I was the compassionate and selfless one. That’s you, Joshua. That’s why you should last longer than the rest of us. Everyone else, they’re like me. They respect you, they like you, but if it benefited them, they would hurt you.”

  “You wouldn’t hurt me, even if it benefited you,” she whispered. She even believed it.

  “That’s because I see you,” he said. An odd choice of words, but his hand pressed warmly against her face. “And you’re important to me. More important than anything here.”

  Josh shook her head, speechless. Moments passed, and Blue’s hand eventually drifted from her cheek. She inhaled, held it. “They’re scared, but these people, most of them, just want to live their lives. They’re decent people.”

  “They’re average people,” Blue agreed. “You’re not.”

  “I’m nothing special,” she insisted, half angrily. She couldn’t live up to anyone’s idea of extraordinary.

  Blue’s silence should have felt neutral, but it seethed. Finally, he said, “We should go to tell Marcus and others about this.”

  “Not tonight,” Josh said, shaking her head. “Sleep first, talk tomorrow.” She wanted to drift away
, to wipe this scene from her immediate reality.

  “We’ll sleep in my room,” Blue said, once again turning his ear toward her. He grabbed her boots and placed them on the edge of the bed. “Bring your pillow.”

  She knew she should object, but she didn’t really want to. Her bed was covered in blood, and having someone she trusted nearby didn’t sound entirely uncomfortable. Five minutes later, they entered Blue’s room, which, not surprisingly, looked identical to hers.

  “No funny business,” she reminded him, and his lips twisted into something she chose to believe was a smile.

  At her request, Blue locked the door and turned on the little ceramic lamp. He gave her the bed and threw his pillow and an extra blanket onto the floor.

  Five minutes later, Josh sighed and scooted to the edge of the bed. “If you sleep on top of the sheet, you can stay in the bed,” she offered.

  “I’m fine,” Blue said.

  “Quit being heroic,” she snapped. “Get into the blasted bed, Blue Lenwood.”

  The narrow bed was little more than a cot, but they both fit. Josh found herself staring into the black waves of his hair as they tangled across his pillow. She was surprised to find the sight faintly comforting.

  A few minutes later, she whispered, “Are you asleep?”

  “If I were, I wouldn’t be able to answer you.”

  She sighed. “Yeah, well, I know. It’s just, it’s polite to ask.” A lengthy silence fell between them, and then she whispered, “I’ve never slept in the same bed with anyone.”

  “Me, neither,” Blue said.

  “It’s warmer.”

  “Yes.”

  “And more crowded.”

  “Yes.”

  “And kind of nice.”

  “Yes.”

  Another pause. “I don’t know what to do in this world, Blue.”

  He remained silent, waiting.

  “I don’t live in this world. I’m the smart one, the organized one, the one who memorizes passages from the Bit’ and knows about books and history and other worlds. I don’t know what to do in this one.”

  “The one where your body lives,” he said.

  A moment passed. “Yeah, I guess that’s what I mean.”

  “Can I have your hand?”

  “Okay,” she said slowly, sliding her right hand over his hip. Her arm still throbbed in its cotton cocoon, but the pain was manageable. His left hand grasped hers and held it against the warmth of his clothed stomach.

  “I think it might be a good world,” Blue said quietly.

  Chapter 6

  The following morning, Josh sat naked in Blue’s bed. She imagined Ima Emm’s expression upon hearing the news: eyes wide, mouth pursed, jowls atremble. The thought both embarrassed and cheered her as she performed her morning exercises.

  Blue had left the room minutes earlier, arms laden with her bloody clothing, promising to return with clean clothes and breakfast. Propped against the wall, covers tucked under her chin as she stretched her legs and rolled her ankles, Josh felt positively lazy.

  The knock fluttered against the door a little earlier than she’d expected. Lynna or Marcus?

  Lynna. The woman burst inside, armed with a kitchen knife and a wild gleam in her eyes.

  “Blue sent me,” she said, closing and locking the door behind her.

  Josh nodded. She’d known he would. “Have a seat,” she said.

  Lynna sat, and Josh told her the entire story of last night’s attack. Her friend made the perfect audience, shaking her head in disbelief, gasping in shock, and threatening violent retribution against the attacker. Best of all, she meant it.

  “Why would anyone want to hurt you?” Lynna asked after Josh finished.

  Josh nodded. “Exactly what I asked. We’re all going to die, anyway, so why bother killing me?”

  Lynna shifted, and Josh held on dearly to her coverings. “But I mean, why you? You’ve done nothing to offend anyone.”

  Josh had given this some thought and immediately popped out an answer. “Except the boy on the first day. Remember him? The one who locked me in with the . . . angel?” She shuddered, remembering the horror, the resignation, the snap of wings in the air.

  Lynna nodded slowly. “And what’s his name? Millen’s boyfriend.”

  Josh straightened slightly. “You think they were courting?”

  Lynna smiled and shook her head. “You are so naïve,” she said fondly.

  Josh glared at her. “His name is Kann,” she said.

  Lynna nodded. “So we have two people. Plus, not everyone here is, you know, fully here.”

  “You think a crazy person might have tried to hurt me?”

  Her friend shrugged and then held out her hands, palm up. “Just listing some ideas.”

  Josh found that comforting. Mindless violence she could understand much easier than someone hating her, plotting to hurt her, coming into her room with a knife and a mission . . .

  “Hey, oh, hey, I’m sorry,” Lynna cried, and Josh realized she was trembling.

  Josh shook her head, and her hair snapped against her cheeks. “I’m fine,” she said through clenched teeth. “Tell me about RJ.”

  “RJ?”

  She forced a smile. “Not as naïve as you think.”

  A wide, pink smile blossomed across Lynna’s face. “She’s . . . great.”

  After waiting a moment, Josh flashed an expectant look.

  Lynna shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you think it’s wrong, to feel this way in, you know, these circumstances?” She waved her hands in a circle.

  Josh opened her mouth to spout a verse from the Bitoran comparing love to finding water in the desert, and then she closed her mouth. Lynna had no belief in Elovah. She wasn’t asking advice about the spiritual morality of falling in love.

  “I mean, I don’t know. I just worry I might be, you know, dishonoring the people taken and the people who will be taken. Silly, I guess.” She looked away, shrugged.

  Josh shook her head. “I think it’s kind of beautiful,” she said. Lynna’s head snapped up, her eyes widened. “Finding love, I mean. In the midst of death, what better way to honor life than to love?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. And besides, you think you’re the only ones?”

  Lynna nodded, grinning. “I knew you could only resist him so long!” she crowed, her hand thumping on the thin mattress.

  Josh rocked backward. “No, I didn’t mean . . . I meant Millen and Kann!”

  “Oh.” Lynna lowered her head again, but Josh caught a glimpse of a tiny smile twitching as it receded from view.

  “So,” Josh continued briskly, “does RJ feel the same?”

  Lynna sighed, shrugged. Until she’d met Blue, Josh had never noticed before how often, and how thoroughly, people used their bodies to communicate. He radiated a calmness, a stillness she found soothing. “I don’t know,” Lynna said.

  They talked for over an hour, until Blue returned with Josh’s clean clothes and a platter of buttered toast.

  “There are sausages and oatmeal available. RJ wouldn’t let me carry those in here.” His voice flowed over them, cool and flavorless as water.

  Lynna made a small noise, and Josh looked away from Blue and into laughing gray-green eyes. She scowled.

  “Get out, everyone, while I get dressed,” she ordered, and they exited the room.

  Ten minutes later, Lynna dragged Josh to the woman who tended Marcus after his seizures. “Quinn, meet Josh. As you can see, Josh needs some medical attention.” She had bled through the bandages in a few small, scattered places.

  Quinn nodded and led Josh, whose legs trembled and burned, into the nearest bathroom. The older woman clucked over the amateurish bandages. “Not sterile,” she groused, after fetching a medical kit. She rebandaged Josh’s arms, shaking her head. “Next time you have a medical emergency, come wake me up,” she admonished.

  “This has better be the last time someone tries to stab me,” Josh snapped
.

  They emerged from the bathroom and into a room full of fifty-some pairs of wide eyes. Josh stumbled, and Quinn grabbed her upper arm. Blue, of course, materialized beside her and put a steadying arm around her shoulders.