The Tithe

by Elle Hill

  The angel wasn’t coming for him, for her. They’d know by now. Yet, still they sat together on the bed, arms around one another. The heaviness in the air dissipated, and Josh gulped. She never thought she’d find recycled air this tasty, let alone reassuring.

  Another minute passed, and Josh became aware of a scratching inside her chest. Her arms tightened in tiny increments around Blue. The air ran smoothly over her tongue like water, but she felt it freeze its way down her esophagus. This moment, this brief time, would end, they would return to the Great Room and count one another, and then Josh and Blue would return to their rooms and awaken tomorrow to fill the time till the angel came for them.

  She was scared, sure. Neither did she want to die. But right now, she didn’t want this warmth, this safety, this connectedness, to come to an end.

  Something squeezed her diaphragm. Dread, she realized with no small sense of surprise. She dreaded letting go of Blue and . . .

  Don’t lie to yourself, she commanded. There is no “and.” Well, okay, maybe quite a few “ands,” but none of them caused her this physical discomfort. Twenty years old, and until the last few days, she’d never felt this kind of . . . warmth. Connection. Support. Godfire, until the past few days, she’d never touched anyone in any but the most utilitarian ways.

  Maybe this is why the books talk about people holding hands, hugging, making love, she thought. It has less to do with ritual, with social convention, and more to do with some innate desire to touch and be touched. She didn’t want the touching to end. There it was.

  It was that very trepidation that made her pull away.

  “We should go check in,” Josh said briskly.

  By the time they entered the Great Room five minutes later, most of the others had already arrived. Marcus nodded at her with a relieved smile. The rest of the room hummed with frenzied conversations. Did you hear? Did you feel? Who hadn’t yet returned?

  Five minutes passed. Ten. Soon, only a handful of people had yet to check in. Including Lynna.

  Josh looked around the room, inquired of numerous people. No one had seen her friend since before they’d retired to their rooms.

  She sent Blue to ask Marcus which room Lynna occupied. Two minutes later, she stood with Blue before a door in one of the hallways. She knocked. Waited. Knocked again. Nothing.

  Heart banging a rhythm in her chest, Josh turned around. “Lynna!” she yelled. “Lynna Fahra d’Ijo!” She blinked, swallowed. “LYNNA!”

  Blue put his hand on her shoulder.

  She opened her mouth, probably to yell her friend’s name once again, and a door near the end of the hallway opened.

  Illuminated by jaundiced overhead lights, the hallway stretched more than sixty yards. Walking that distance would be torment for Josh, so she remained in place as the woman stepped with agonizing slowness into the hallway.

  Lynna hurried toward her, shoulders hunched, tangled hair streaming like bright orange ribbons. As she neared them, Josh saw she bit her lip. Also, she wore her skirt backward.

  “Sorry!” she breathed as she reached them. “I didn’t . . . I was . . . oomph!”

  Josh had crushed her in a brief, one-armed hug. When she released her, Josh creased her face into a ferocious frown. “Next time remember to check in,” she said fiercely.

  “I’m sorry,” Lynna repeated, smoothing her hair with her hands. “I was, you know . . .”

  “Yes, we know,” Josh said. “Is RJ okay, too?” Truth told, she felt slightly guilty for not noticing the other woman’s absence till now.

  Smiling slightly, Lynna lowered her eyes and nodded.

  “May we remain shielded from Her wrath,” Josh sighed, and then realized the inanity of the statement under the circumstances. “Go back to her. We’ll tell everyone you’re okay.” She turned and shuffled back to the Great Room.

  “Lynna’s all right,” she announced. “So is RJ.”

  Marcus nodded. “That leaves Emmel and Marat.”

  Josh and Blue sat. She knew Emmel. She’d used him as a threat against the boy who’d later locked her in the hallway. They weren’t friends, but she’d liked him. Losing people she knew was inevitable; in two months, none of them would remain. Still, it stung.

  “Who’s Marat?” she asked Blue.

  “I don’t know,” he said, in a tone that indicated he didn’t much care, either.

  A giant yawn dividing his face, Emmel lumbered into the room from the hallway Josh and Blue had just vacated. “Sorry,” he rumbled. “I fell asleep. Somebody’s yelling woke me up.”

  Marat, then.

  A child’s voice raised in a wail of pure agony. Josh couldn’t see the child, but she heard someone rush to her, or him, and then the muffling of the cry as the other person comforted the child. Everyone remained silent in the face of such grief.

  I’m sorry for wishing Emmel was spared, she prayed, perhaps to Elovah, but likelier to the child. No matter who disappeared, someone would grieve terribly.

  Other than for herself, she had never grieved. She’d never cared enough to grieve. Why now? She had at most two months to live—in an environment in which people disappeared every single day—and she found herself worried about, caring about, these people.

  Suddenly angry, or maybe something suspiciously softer, she stood. “I’m going to sleep,” she announced.

  Everyone except Blue ignored her. He stood and offered her his arm. She stared at it for a long moment. Finally, sighing, she grabbed it and left the room with him.

  “In my own room,” she reminded him as they entered their hallway.

  Blue remained silent.

  She used the bathroom and then chose the room right next door to Blue’s. “No need to worry,” she pointed out.

  He still said nothing.

  “Okay, well, goodnight,” she said, standing in her new doorway.

  “Goodnight,” he replied.

  She closed the door, locked it, and clicked the small bedside lamp into life. Her new bed creaked under her weight as she sat and removed her boots.

  Josh recited her nightly prayers. At the end, she hesitated, remembering Blue’s words about free will and asking for things in ignorance. Finally, she said in a rush, “I know it’s selfish, but I want Blue and Lynna to stay here as long as possible. This friendship thing, it hurts. I almost don’t like it. But I also do. I guess this is something only You can understand. For as long as possible, may they remain shielded from Your wrath.”

  She lay on the bed and stared at the patterns of light on the ceiling. The one on the left looked a little like a jackrabbit.

  Something brushed against the door. Josh held her breath, waiting to see if someone tried the doorknob, but no other sound followed. Had someone accidentally touched it? Sure, except no one else shared her and Blue’s hallway.

  Should she check? What if someone lay in wait? It was probably just Blue brushing by on his way to her other room for some reason, right? Right?

  She sat up in bed, painfully pulled her boots back on, and stood. A few wobbles shook her, and she leaned against the wall. Finally, she shuffled the few short steps to the door.

  Her heart throbbed in her throat. She took a deep breath, let it out, took another. Quickly, she unlocked the door and threw it open.

  No one lunged at her, no knives or projectiles hurtled toward her. All in all, she remained safe and comfortable. Thank heaven.

  Blue sat cross-legged against the wall to the right of her door. Josh stepped outside her room to fully face him.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “You know what I’m doing,” he replied with his usual blandness.

  “Go to bed, Blue.”

  “This is my bed tonight,” he said.

  “You’re going to sleep sitting up?”

  “I’m not going to sleep at all.”

  Josh briefly considered kicking him. True, she didn’t have much leg strength and it wouldn’t really hurt, but the symbolic gesture might help vent s
ome of her ire.

  “You’re blackmailing me,” she said through her teeth.

  “Not at all. I’m not issuing any ultimatums. I want you to sleep, and I have to keep you safe. This is the best solution.”

  She blew out a breath that sent her hair scurrying to the sides of her face. He deserved to sleep sitting up; she’d never asked for his misguided protection.

  “Fine,” she snapped. “I’ll stay in your room tonight.”

  “No need,” he said. “I’m comfortable.”

  “Blue, get your behind off the ground right now,” she growled. “I’m tired, and I can’t let you sleep on the concrete outside my bedroom.”

  He rose instantly to his feet with an ease she couldn’t even remember in herself.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  Chapter 7

  Guilt or no guilt, if Blue weren’t blind, Josh wasn’t so sure she would consent to sleep in the same bed with him. She awakened the next morning, lying on her right side, Blue tucked in behind her. His arm even curved around her waist and rested on her soft belly. The imrabi would tell her even lying in bed with another person was a sin, but it didn’t feel sinful. Truth told, it felt pretty delicious.

  In spite of all that, she slept under the sheet and he slept on top. It seemed more proper, true, but she didn’t do it for that reason. Mostly.

  She didn’t want him touching her feet.

  Ridiculous, yes. Vain, certainly. But true. Her feet embarrassed her. In a life filled with burning intelligence and an almost supernatural capacity for organizing things, her feet remained stubbornly unruly, different, freakish.

  “Good morning,” Blue said.

  Of course he was already awake. “Good morning,” she replied. “Did you sleep okay?”

  “Mostly,” he replied.

  “Bad dreams?”

  “I stayed up a long time listening to you snore.”

  “I do not snore!” she gasped.

  “You do.”

  She almost snapped at him that she certainly did not and then realized she wouldn’t know if she did. No one had ever slept in the same room with her.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled through clenched teeth.

  “I’m not. I liked listening to you breathe.”

  There wasn’t much to say to that, so she swung her legs off the bed and sat up.

  Ten minutes later, they left the room. “You go on,” she told Blue as they reached the bathroom. “I’ll join you in a few.”

  Inside the bathroom, Josh headed to the nearest stall. From behind the door of the last stall came a soft scuff of shoes on concrete. It was the first time she’d known anyone else to use this bathroom.

  She had pulled down her pants and sat down when she heard a slight, breathless snicker from somewhere to her right.

  I’m alone, Josh realized. Alone and rather, um, compromised. She sat, vulnerable and silent, while her heart throbbed in her ears. She held her breath, waiting for another sound.

  A second later, a slight growl drifted from several stalls down. Not long, not even especially eerie. Rising as it did toward the end, it sounded more playful than anything else. Surely an attacker wouldn’t taunt her with animal noises.

  Josh stared at the gray metal door three feet in front of her. A heavy, strong door, one that could protect her from any matter of threats. A door secured with a rotating latch accessible from both inside and outside the stall.

  A woman’s throaty chuckle had her brows furrowing. A chuckle? What could possibly be so amusing about using the facilities?

  Another quiet noise, this one brief and higher pitched, encouraged Josh to lean down between her legs and glance to the right. As she’d expected, two pairs of feet, one whose toes dangled higher and backward, occupied the last stall.

  She shook her head as she finished her business and flushed. As she reached the door, she considered calling out “Carry on!” but figured they would, anyway.

  Blue stood outside the bathroom, looming tall and cold. As much as he annoyed her with his insistence on following and “protecting” her, yeah, she could admit it was kind of nice to know she could have hollered for assistance had the bathroom couple been more interested in her demise than their passion amid the commodes.

  Once in the Great Room, they headed toward their usual place on the couch. Lynna sat there already, back very straight, hands folded in her lap, gaze flitting about the room. Sitting beside her, so close she could almost touch her, sat the precocious little girl with the big mouth. Her posture matched Lynna’s, although she kept glancing at the woman’s face.

  Josh plunked down beside her friend. “You have an admirer,” she murmured.

  Lips pursed, Lynna nodded. “Don’t I know it. Marat looked after her, so now she needs a mother figure.”

  “Why you?” Josh asked from the corner of her mouth.

  Lynna’s shoulder lifted in a subdued shrug. “Kids like me. It’s probably the fat thing—maternal stereotypes and all that.”

  Josh smiled. “Where’s RJ?”

  Lynna caught her breath and ducked her head. “In the kitchen,” she murmured.

  Josh stared at her a moment. Finally, she said, “The only thing in my mind right now is I wish my hands would stop hurting and let me go chop potatoes. I don’t care what you two do when no one’s around.”

  Lynna’s hands fluttered up from her lap. She glanced sharply, meaningfully, at the little girl.

  “Kids have a right to know what’s going on in the world,” Josh said stoutly. The imrabi had never spared her feelings or varnished reality for her, and she’d been glad. She knew from the stories she overheard from other imrabi about sheltering children from the glare of truth. Josh had felt even more grateful for the trust implied by not shielding her.

  Okay, maybe she wasn’t quite as blasé about unmarital sex as she sounded, but she didn’t want her friend, one of the only good friends she’d ever made, to feel judged.

  “This isn’t the world, though,” Lynna said, smiling slightly.

  Josh wasn’t sure what she meant by that.

  “It’s the end of it,” Blue agreed.

  She glanced at him.

  “Will I go to heaven?” the little girl asked.

  They all remained silent for a minute. Finally, Lynna said, “Josh here knows a lot about the Bitoran. Josh, what does it say about children?”

  “What’s your name?” Josh asked the girl.

  “Garyn,” she said simply.

  It could have been an idyllic moment: a beautiful, rosy-cheeked youngling begging for the weight of tradition and faith to reassure and sustain her. Josh, the bearer of this great, and apparently esoteric knowledge, could enlighten her, and they could revel in the beauty of the Great Plan while reflecting on Elovah’s grace.

  Except nothing about this moment was idyllic. Garyn didn’t stare with empty, innocent eyes, waiting for the words to fill her up. Her too-big head nodded balanced atop a wasted frame and her dark brown eyes had narrowed with something that almost looked like doubt. Josh’s hands itched and burned from her knife wounds, and she sat between a woman who doubted the Bit’ and a man with whom she’d slept in the same bed.

  This wasn’t a vignette in the Book of Salvation but a cloying slice of reality smothered in apocalypse sauce.

  “In the Book of Wrath,” Josh said slowly, “it talks about the children of the Twelves who had been treated like pets, pampered and useless. The Twelves pretended they worshipped their children, but they secretly resented them for being burdens on their household. Imagine resenting your own children! But they did. Naturally they felt guilty about it, though, so they pretended their children were pets and dressed them up and put bows in their hair. Parents burned with anger and guilt and spent their wage comps on their children, always buying their forgiveness. They hoped their children would never find out about their resentment, but children are smart. And so children and parents remained estranged from one another.

  “When Elovah came, S
he despaired at the state of affairs between parent and child. Children aren’t pets, nor are they ornaments, She proclaimed. All humans and animals are Elovah’s children, and we are to work together like cells in a single organ, sustaining our communities and working to lead an obedient life that glorifies Her.”

  Garyn was nodding. “Ten Year.”