The Tithe

by Elle Hill

  “Who said you survived?” Hollyn repeated. Her face had pinched into a series of small wrinkles and valleys.

  “Well,” Josh said slowly. “I kind of do.”

  “Or so you say.”

  Josh shook her head. “I’m almost certain my pulse and breath mean I’m among the living.”

  “Not what I mean,” Hollyn insisted. “I’ve been thinking. Who knows what happened behind that closed door? How do we know this is you?”

  Josh sat forward. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, look at how much you influence everything, from our discussions to the big events. You’re not a charismatic leader like Marcus or especially useful like your friend, RJ, but you’ve become the center of—” She waved her hand at the rest of the room. “—all this.”

  “I’m bossy,” Josh snapped.

  “Well, heaven knows that’s true,” Hollyn agreed. “But some of us have been wondering if maybe the being who came out the morning after the first angel visit was really Josh.”

  “Maybe you’re an angel,” a male, teenaged voice called softly.

  Josh didn’t respond. She couldn’t.

  After a moment of contemplation, the room erupted. Listening to the strands of conversation, Josh realized Hollyn and the young man weren’t the only ones who entertained the idea that she might be a . . . How long had these people juggled the possibility that she was an . . . Heaven, she couldn’t even think it!

  All the arguments Josh would have issued—the golden, black haired, public appearance of angels; the lack of sense in having an angel among them; her complete lack of holiness—others brought up. Some of the conversationalists dwelled far too long on that last point, she thought, but their arguments remained valid.

  Josh turned to Blue, whose face pointed with icy patience at the far wall. “I’m not an angel,” she told him.

  “I know,” he said.

  “I’m just as scared as anyone when the angel comes,” she said, but in a loud enough voice to carry.

  The angel came.

  At the hiss of her final word, the lights in the Great Room extinguished. Breaths squeaked into startled lungs, hands clasped others, bodies tumbled to the floor.

  Before he could yank her toward him, Josh threw her arms around Blue. He flung his cloak over her head and hugged her tightly to him.

  The creak and snap of wings filled the room. Against his back, Josh’s hands clenched into fists.

  Air whooshed over their heads, and Blue’s arms clenched against her.

  “Don’t take him,” she mouthed against his freshly laundered shirt.

  The crack of wings stirred the fabric of Blue’s cloak.

  “Please don’t take them,” she amended.

  A moment later, complete silence cupped the room. Josh opened her eyes and flung the cloak from her head. Yellow light stung her eyes.

  Several heads faced her, several eyes squinted in her direction.

  “Who is it?” she asked loudly, her voice a little shaky. Those shiny, flat faces . . .

  “Mare’s not here!” someone called out.

  “She’s been in her room all day,” someone else—Jeet, Josh thought—comforted.

  “Go check on her, Jeet,” Josh snapped. “Anyone else not here?”

  “I don’t see Kann,” a calm woman’s voice announced.

  Around Josh, eyes widened further.

  “Kann attacked Joshua, and now he’s gone,” someone murmured.

  Other voices muttered in response.

  “You said the angels would come, and they did,” another marveled.

  Josh gave in and rubbed at her face with her hands. “It was just coincidental timing,” she said tightly.

  Fifteen minutes of searching turned up two big finds: Mare’s marriage to Kadin and the absence of Kann.

  Other Tithes’ eyes burned in their sockets as Josh attempted to explain her role in the marriage as well as her complete lack of divinity. It didn’t make sense to think she could be an angel, she pointed out, after tending to Netta’s screeching and Jeet’s accusations.

  It wasn’t everyone, nor was it a large minority; however, ten or so Tithes gazed at her with a devotion and awe she found as discomfiting as she did startling.

  Finally, Josh allowed her head to bow toward her chest. “I’m going to bed,” she announced to her friends. Lynna squeezed her hand, and Josh let her.

  Lying together in their bed, Josh pressed her head against Blue’s shoulder and laughed helplessly. “I upgraded today from an imrabi to an angel,” she choked.

  Blue stroked her head, and she collapsed against him, the laughter drying up. Her eyes grew heavy with moisture.

  He kissed her head. Amazing how something she could barely feel through thousands of strands comforted her. She threw an arm around his middle.

  “They’re all wrong,” he said.

  “Well, yeah,” Josh said against his upper arm.

  “You’re better than any imrabi or angel.”

  Her tears dried completely.

  In her dreams, Josh huddled under Blue’s cloak while the roar of wings thumped in her ears. Cool, stale air ruffled her hair and breathed across her cheeks.

  Thump, thump. The sound was nearby—practically on top of her. Breath snagging in her throat, Josh turned her head to the right, seeking Blue’s warm, clove-like scent. She could almost hear the sound of wind whistling through individual feathers.

  Suddenly, the wings made a loud cracking noise, like someone snapping a wooden stick over their knee. The angel was diving down, down, down.

  Down to grab her.

  Her hair whipped in her face as Josh shrank away from the sound. With some horror, she realized she’d extended her hand to ward off the being. Leave me alone, she thought, the words burning brightly, almost visibly, in her mind. Her hand started shaking. She drew it back very slightly.

  A cool hand touched hers, and she almost shrieked.

  The angel has come. I’m next.

  She pulled in a panic against the hand. To her surprise, the being offered no resistance, but instead of releasing her, it came toward her. Upward to her.

  Wait.

  Upward? And why was her hair blowing in a breeze?

  Below her, a woman’s voice wailed in terror.

  Below her.

  For the first time, she realized the hand had not grasped hers. She had grabbed it.

  She opened her eyes wider but saw nothing.

  On either side of her, wings cracked, and the wind sliced across her face. The woman she carried begged for her life.

  She, Joshua Barstow, was the angel.

  The following day, Josh plunked determinedly onto the round couch. Faces turned toward her, eyes followed her movements. Chin high, eyes steady, hands clasped tightly in her lap, she conversed with Lynna, Avery, and RJ.

  Blue remained silent throughout the morning.

  She wondered which made her more nervous: the people who thought her an angel or the man who believed her superior to one.

  I’m just a library caretaker.

  In the early afternoon, two men approached her and, glancing nervously around the room, asked if she would marry them, too. She wasn’t a real imrabi, she warned them, but they didn’t care. An hour later, she, Blue, and their friend, Amryn, an older woman with a white film clouding her eyes, attended their makeshift wedding. They had no rings and accepted with shy laughter the pillowcase and juice substitutions.

  Scuffling back to her seat, Josh distracted herself from the pain by pondering what had made these three people Tithes. Amryn’s eyes? But unsighted people could perform any number of jobs, she thought. Kiro, one of the grooms, walked with a severe limp and couldn’t use his left hand, but his eyes burned with intelligence and good humor. His sort-of husband, Jon, seemed to move and respond to the world more slowly, but she’d found him perfectly friendly and obviously devoted to Kiro.

  Who decided what constituted an unworkable or, as RJ’s town called them,
incaps? How could these people—many of whom could work, most of whom could live happy, uncomplicated townfolks’ lives—be sacrificed so cavalierly?

  Someone has to do it, she reminder herself.

  Yes, but why this group of people, the unworkables, the definition of which seemed to vary from town to town?

  Maybe they just didn’t know what else to do with them.

  On her way back to the couch, a boy, probably not old enough to shave, reached out a hand and brushed her pants.

  Gritting her teeth, she turned briefly to him; her legs wouldn’t allow for anything else. “I’m not an angel,” she told him.

  He stared at her, open-mouthed.

  She sat with an extra heaviness. Blue lowered himself next to her, as he always did.

  “You can ask Josh now,” Lynna said with a sigh.

  Garyn immediately hopped to her feet and came to stand in front of Josh.

  “Yes?” the woman asked cautiously.

  “I asked Lynna and she didn’t know. And RJ didn’t know, and I didn’t think Avery would know because, you know, he knows about writing but not a lot about this kind of stuff,” Garyn explained.

  “Okay.”

  “Yeah, so how come girls and boys have different bathrooms?”

  Josh stared at her a moment before bursting into helpless laughter.

  “What?” Garyn demanded. “I didn’t think it was funny.”

  Josh shook her head. “I just had someone treat me like an angel. I like this way better.”

  After a minute, Garyn grinned.

  Josh thought for a time. “I don’t know for sure,” she said. “But I read about it in the Twelve’s books. I think they did it and we inherited it from them. You know we live in buildings they built and use sewer systems they fashioned.”

  Garyn shook her head.

  “Well, we do. We owe our infrastructure to the Twelves. They were great builders and developers. Not so great at taking care of each other, but you know that.” Garyn and Lynna nodded. At this evidence of an audience, Josh sat back, clasped her hands. “I guess they thought women and men should pee separately.”

  “Why?” Garyn persisted. “We don’t eat in different places.”

  “Well, we kind of do, or some of us, at least. The imrabi and minnabi live and work in separate buildings.”

  “But that’s work, not peeing,” Garyn pointed out. “And everyone knows imrabi are too busy taking care of services and orphans to want to marry anyone. Who would they marry, anyway? Minnabi?”

  “Everyone knows minnabi are too busy sewing themselves ever-bigger hats to marry,” Lynna muttered.

  Josh opened her mouth to defend the men who went into service of Elovah, and then she snapped it closed. Really, it did seem their hats got bigger and more elaborate every year.

  “I don’t know, Garyn,” she said finally. “The Twelves designed the buildings to have two sets of bathrooms. I do know the Twelves thought a lot about sex. I think they were worried they wouldn’t be able to control themselves if they knew the person right next to them was only half-clothed.”

  Lynna snorted. “What about onesex or allsex people? They thought we had more self-control?”

  Josh shrugged. “I guess so.” Truthfully, she hadn’t read many books written by Twelves that even mentioned any kind of non-twosex couples. She hadn’t thought much about it before now. Given how much they wrote about sex between them, perhaps the Twelves’ twosex people really couldn’t control themselves. Or maybe, as the town leaders did now, the Twelves had begun correcting the exploding population by controlling reproduction. After all, overpopulation, as the Bitoran mentioned, was one of the sins the Twelves visited upon the planet.

  Lynna’s question raised intriguing possibilities for research. Not for the first time since she’d arrived, Josh wished for her books so she could pore through them and catalog her findings.

  Lynna snorted again. After a glance at her surrogate mother, Garyn also shook her head with an identical wry expression over the senselessness of the Twelves.

  Later, Lynna accompanied Josh to the vastly overused bathroom and questioned her about her kissing experiences. When Josh explained she hadn’t done any kind of kissing last night, Lynna nodded and patted her arm.

  “If you have more questions, I’m here,” she said.

  “How are . . .?” Josh jerked her chin toward the door. When Lynna quirked a brow, Josh clarified, “How are you and RJ?”

  Lynna smiled at her. “Wonderful,” she said. “I can’t believe I came here and found the woman I would want to marry.”

  “Whoa,” Josh said.

  Lynna nodded.

  “Don’t you think it’s kind of fast?” she asked.

  Lynna shrugged. Her sand-colored skin shone brighter than the overhead light. Really, Josh didn’t think she’d ever seen someone happier. “Maybe it is kind of quick, but that’s good, since we don’t have much time.”

  Josh dropped her eyes, and the duo returned to the couch.

  Dinner divided up the otherwise-uneventful day. A cheesy vegetable casserole congealed into happy lumps on Josh’s plate as she hungrily pursued it. She’d never before known this kind of gustatory delight.

  Blue, Lynna, cheesy vegetable casserole: Ironic that after living an ascetic life, she had to be sacrificed to find such delights in living.

  Funnier still to think that, whether quickly or slowly, she would lose it, all of it.

  Why shouldn’t we be happy in whatever time we each have? she thought.

  Come later evening, more and more eyes swiveled in her direction. Quinn, the healer, even sat down next to Josh and apologized for her rude behavior when she’d first bandaged her hands.

  “I’m not an angel,” Josh said for what felt like the hundredth time.

  “Oh!” Quinn said, startled. Her hands fluttered to her hair, smoothed over it. “I know. I just—I wanted to apologize.”

  “Apology accepted,” Josh said, and the woman moved on, smiling very slightly.

  Josh had begun a conversation with Blue about her research into the Twelves when the light extinguished.

  Blue snapped his cloak over her head, and they clung to one another.

  As in her dream, she saw nothing, heard the snap and creak of great wings. Now, however, she felt Blue’s arms around her, smelled his spicy-citrus scent. She closed her eyes and prayed in a jerky, breathless voice.

  Less than two minutes after the light had gone out, the silence rang in the Great Room. Josh emerged from her hidey-hole, and the others blinked themselves back from their terror.

  It took fewer than five minutes to discover whom the angel had taken.

  Jeet was gone.

  Chapter 10

  The following day, no one asked her to marry them. Some Tithes regarded her with suspicion, some with awe. She felt gratified that most ignored her.

  At noon, she reported in with Marcus: six of her seven Tithes remained. After nine days, most of the towns had lost at least one by now. One person gone per day.

  Except, of course, the first night.

  She and Avery discussed Canara Merry d’Ijo, one of her favorite poets. Avery had memorized several of her poems, and Josh happily forced her friends to listen.

  Avery’s eyes flickered once, twice, three times over Josh’s shoulder. Finally, with a sigh, she asked flatly, “Is she still staring at me?”

  Avery remained silent for a moment. “Netta, like so many of us, is superstitious,” he said finally, gently. “There’s no reason to think you were involved in Jeet’s . . . removal. But you seem to be the one constant in all the chaos, so Netta chooses you to blame.”

  “That, plus she’s a rattlesnake of a woman,” Lynna muttered.

  Josh peered around Avery and raised her eyebrows. Lynna ducked her head with a tiny smile.

  “I wish everyone would stop staring at me,” Josh said in a low voice. “I’m just a library caretaker who happens to have read the Bitoran.”

  Avery
shrugged. “Superstition allows us to pretend there are patterns in the chaos.”

  That night, Josh’s hands felt well enough to help RJ in the kitchen. Petty, perhaps, but she couldn’t help but feel the sting from Hollyn’s words about not being as useful as Marcus or RJ. So, while RJ stirred giant pots of beans and added spices, Josh opened cans and arranged dishes.