by Elle Hill
“Fast learner,” Josh muttered, and sipped again.
The day rolled on, bland and uneventful. In the middle of the afternoon, Lynna discussed her love of baking breads. “Not that great. I just liked to dabble,” Lynna said shyly, ducking her head. “My mom made me stop, since she was convinced it’s why I stayed fat. After I became tithed, she still wouldn’t let me, since she thought it would make her fatter.”
“It’s the end of the world,” Josh said. “Let’s eat bread.”
Lynna promised to bake the following day.
Toward the end of the night, when the minutes dripped with dread, Garyn dropped into a sound sleep on the couch next to Josh. Somehow, her head ended up in Josh’s lap. Without conscious thought, Josh found herself stroking the girl’s thin black hair. She realized she’d never asked why Garyn had been tithed.
She would never have children. Honestly, it wasn’t as though she’d ever planned on it. Before she’d become a Tithe, she’d expected she would become an imrabi when she grew up. Until coming here, she couldn’t have imagined questioning that choice. For Josh Barstow, the woman without a real last name, the woman who’d never held real conversations with men other than minnabi (and everyone knew they weren’t real men), the institution of marriage had sounded as remote and intellectually interesting as her study of Twelves: fascinating data with, for her, little practical application.
If I weren’t a Tithe, I would adopt the children raised as orphans, the ones no one wants, she thought, and then shook her head at her folly. She was a Tithe. Her life was over at twenty. Plus, had she not come here, she’d never have thought such radical thoughts. She’d still be in her library, cataloguing her new books and taking afternoon notes.
Besides, to adopt children, she’d have to be married. She’d never met anyone marriage-worthy, no one for whom she’d choose to leave her work at the rab’ri.
Until she came here.
For a minute, maybe two, Josh let herself be as silly as the other girls her age she’d seen during services, passing notes and catching the eyes of other single youth. She imagined Blue and her, married, two adopted, unworkable children living with them in their two-bedroom apartment. The adults would work during the day—Josh at a bookmaker’s, perhaps, or as a layperson at the rab’ri, Blue as a—what?—a teacher, maybe, or a writer. He did manifest the occasional verbal flair. The children could apprentice during the day. At night, she or Blue could cook . . . Okay, they’d invite RJ and Lynna over to cook for them, and Garyn could play with her sort-of cousins.
Marriage, children, a job or life beyond the thick walls of the rab’ri: she’d never once imagined any of these things for her. She’d had to die before she found a reason to live her life. The humor did not escape her.
Now, the girl’s hair slid between her fingers. Garyn, a girl as precocious and obnoxiously curious as Josh had been eleven years ago. Only eleven years? Yes, she realized. She was twenty and Garyn was nine years old. Nine years old.
In that moment, she wished desperately the angel would take her before any of her loved ones.
The lights blinked out. Blue threw his cloak around her and drew her tightly to him. Pulse pounding so persistently in her throat she could almost taste it, Josh splayed the edge of the cloak as much around Garyn as she could. Irrational, perhaps, but she felt better making the girl as invisible as possible to the angel.
Josh’s breath, coming almost in pants, thundered inside the pure blackness of the cloak.
As usual, the angel swooped back and forth, perhaps deciding which Tithe to take, perhaps drawing out the terror of the moment. The sound of wind through feathers smoothed throughout the room.
From almost directly overhead, or so it sounded, came the crack of wings and the whistle of displaced air. Something rustled the material of the cloak. Josh jumped and squeaked.
Something drew Garyn from her.
“NO!” Josh screamed, and lunged to grab the girl’s shoulders. The cloak fell from her head. Not three feet from her, coming from slightly above, luminescent white eyes stared into hers. She froze, too terrified to make a noise, to resist the angel’s claim on the little girl.
The eyes shifted, dipping downward, and something soft and cold brushed her cheek. It felt like a finger. She stared, open-mouthed, breath frozen into chunks in her chest.
“Joshua!” Blue cried, the sound anguished, and threw the cloak back over her.
Its heaviness settled over her and Garyn. Josh cried out in wordless terror when it blocked her view.
The force pulling Garyn away eased, and Josh crashed back into Blue. Garyn gasped as though a hand had just been removed from her mouth and then cried out in surprise.
“Shh, shh,” Josh said urgently. “Be quiet, Garyn. Hush.” The girl obeyed.
Against her, Blue trembled and crushed her so tightly against him, her arms and shoulders ached.
The angel once again circled the room before diving with a creak and snap of wings. A young boy’s voice screamed vowel sounds, long and loud.
A moment later, the silence settled over them all as heavily and definitely as a cloak. Josh tried to throw aside Blue’s, but he held her crushed against him, arms pinned inside the circle of his.
“Let me go,” she told him, and after a minute, he did. She threw aside the cloak and blinked against the aggressively bright, yellow lighting.
Beside her, Blue’s face had transformed. Normally smooth and icy calm, now he looked terrified. He breathed heavily, his nostrils flared, the whites of his eyes encircled the light blue.
“It’s okay,” she soothed him. “Garyn and I are here.” She looked down at the girl, whose dark brown eyes had similarly widened.
“You saved me,” she whispered. “You saved me.”
“No,” Josh said. How could she? No one prevailed against the angel. She knew this, yet in that moment, she wondered if, maybe, maybe . . .
A child wailed, his cries of anguish rising and falling like the desert landscape. One of the twins from Adelanto. His arms, now empty, reached outward as his voice shrieked onward.
As he’d said he would, Marcus remained in his room come late evening. No one else stepped forward to impose order on the chaos, so Josh called loudly, “Someone take him to his room.” It wouldn’t help the poor child, but it would help the rest of them regain their sense of normalcy.
A middle-aged woman who sat next to the child looked around uncomfortably, pursed her lips, and then placed her arms around the boy and spoke soothing words.
The woman and the boy had stepped into the hallway when the boy’s cries changed into words: “It took Tegan!” The words rose into a scream that faded as they progressed.
Several feet away from her, Lynna sobbed against RJ’s shoulder while the other woman gently stroked her back. Josh felt moisture in her own eyes. She breathed until she felt certain she could speak.
“The angel took the child’s brother,” she said. It was obvious, but she’d found it needed to be said. “Tegan.”
“The boy, the one it didn’t take, his name—” Lynna began, and broke down again.
“His name is Kegan,” someone else said.
Lynna nodded.
“Josh saved me!” Garyn blurted.
Everyone, every single person in the room, turned to her.
“No, no, no,” Josh said, shaking her head. She didn’t know what had just happened, but she knew it was more complicated than Josh versus The Angel. Blue’s fingers tightened against her right arm. Until then, she hadn’t noticed he still held it. She turned to him and found his expression once more bland. Her left hand curled around his fingers. He relaxed his grip and held her hand.
“What happened?” Hollyn, the woman who had first accused Josh of divinity, demanded. She usually sat around the center column where Josh couldn’t see her, but tonight she’d chosen one of the free chairs near the front of the room. As usual, she held a crutch staunchly before her, a shield between her body and the rest of the room. She peered th
rough it, eyes narrowed.
“I was sleeping, but I woke up when Josh threw her coat over me. I knew what was going on, so I just laid there while the angel flew around.” The girl shuddered. “I still don’t know why they’re so scary. But then the angel grabbed my ankle—”
“How did you know it was an angel?” Hollyn snapped. Her crutch remained steady as the she sat forward.
Garyn opened her mouth, closed it. She shook her head. “You just know,” she said flatly. “It felt all cold and hard. And I just, when the angel touched my ankle, I just felt all quiet inside.” She turned to Josh, and her dark eyes shone in the jaundiced light. “I didn’t even want to fight it.”
Josh remembered her first night here, the brush of an angel’s feather against her cheek, the warm, peaceful feeling that encouraged her to sink downward. She nodded her head.
Garyn turned her face back toward Hollyn. “And then Josh yelled and yanked me away from the angel.”
That wasn’t exactly how it’d happened. Josh remembered staring into those bright, colorless eyes. The angel had touched her. Again. Yet here she was.
Everyone stared at her.
“You can’t fight an angel,” Mare said, but there was more awe in her voice than doubt.
“I . . .” Josh began, but what could she say?
“I held on to Era as tight as I could,” a girl’s voice said. From where she sat, Josh couldn’t see her, but the girl sounded near tears. “Me and her, we became friends even before we got here. We held on as tight as you can hold someone. And the angel just took her from me like I was a baby holding a doll.”
“And Kann said the angel snatched Millen from him,” Hollyn pointed out. “Kann wasn’t a small man.”
Silence spread before them. Finally, Josh shrugged and said with a confidence she didn’t feel, “I guess it decided it didn’t want Garyn. There’s nothing special about me.”
They stared at her.
Josh glanced at Garyn, but her eyes were just as round. She looked at Blue then, and his complete serenity, his lack of expression, provided her a space to rest her eyes while her thoughts twirled and spun.
What if they were right? What if she hadn’t grabbed for Garyn? Would Tegan have been safe for tonight?
Ridiculous. I’m one person, and not an especially strong one—at least, not compared to Kann.
“It’s because she’s an imrabi,” someone called out. “The angel can tell she’s a holy person.”
“Jimson,” Netta snapped from the front of the room.
Several people turned toward her in shock. Even Josh leaned forward to see her better. The woman looked a little surprised by her own outburst, but then she continued. “Joshua Barstow is just an orphan raised by her town’s rab’ri. Marcus was also raised in a rab’ri, and you don’t see him pretending to be an angel.”
“I’ve never pretended to be anything,” Josh snapped. “No, I’m not an angel, and I’m not an imrabi. I’m just me.”
“How do you explain this?” Hollyn demanded, pointing at Garyn.
Josh shook her head. “I don’t know. I think the angel changed its mind.”
She’d led such a quiet, orderly life before coming here. A nothing, a small and insignificant cog in the rab’ri’s great machine. Now, she listened while a roomful of fifty-some people argued whether or not she qualified as a divine being.
“Holy or not,” she finally said, rocking to her feet. “I’m tired. I’m going to sleep.” She bid her friends a good night and went with Blue to the hallways they shared with no one.
She slipped into the bed, facing the wall, and wandered into an uneasy rest. In her dreams, she swooped through the air, feeling it brush across her cheeks and riffle her hair. She clasped tiny hands, lifted them from safety, and then went in search of more. The wailing of children stroked her ears like the finest music.
Chapter 11
Blue awakened her the following morning with a hard kick.
Josh’s eyes popped open. Behind her, Blue twitched again, although this time sans kick, thank heaven. A moment later, he gasped and jerked against her. Josh cricked her head to see if he was awake.
“Morning,” she said.
“Good morning,” Blue said in his inflectionless voice.
“Bad dreams?”
“Yes.”
She waited, but of course he wasn’t forthcoming. Josh turned to him, then, and pressed her lips against his. It felt exactly as she remembered it: hot, moist, and compelling. His lips moved against her, and she parted her mouth to draw him closer.
She drank him in.
Just when the feeling started pooling in her lower belly, itching for some kind of attention, she eased away and took several deep breaths.
“Dangerous,” she repeated, chucking shakily.
“It’s like falling, but without the pain at the end,” Blue whispered. His lids half-shuttered the crystalline brightness of his blue, blue eyes.
She pressed her forehead against his. “Do you feel that same feeling?” she asked tentatively.
“Probably,” Blue said, and gave her one of his rare smiles.
She smiled back. “I mean, that feeling that it feels so good, and it could feel even better?” She closed her eyes in embarrassment. “I’m not describing it well. Like this is just a sip of a drink with dozens of flavors in it?”
“I think I understand. You mean this feels so good, you think it could go further and we could have sex.”
Josh jerked away in surprise. “Blue!”
“What? Was I wrong?”
“That’s . . . not exactly.” She glared at him, although of course he couldn’t see her fine facial work. “I mean . . . I was trying to be poetic.”
“About sex.”
“Fine,” she huffed.
“Would you like to have sex?” Blue asked in his usual, bland tone.
Be an adult, be an adult.
“Yes,” she said.
“So would I.”
Never, ever had she thought she’d have this conversation. Ever. She took a deep breath. “I can’t,” she said.
“I didn’t think you could,” Blue responded. “You love Lynna and RJ, but you still don’t approve of sex before marriage.”
“The Bitoran . . .” she began. “No.”
“Then perhaps we should get married.”
Josh gaped at him. Her thoughts whirled, round and round like grains of sand in a sandstorm.
How did he know I thought about that? He wants to marry me? I can’t get married without a minnabi! Do I really want to have se—make love? What if it hurts the way the imrabi said? He wants to marry me? I never thought I would get married. This isn’t real. Nothing is real here. Everything is twice as real here.
Finally, she asked, “Are you suggesting we get married just so we can . . . you know?”
“Yes,” Blue said.
She gasped—an honest-to-goodness gasp. “That’s something the imrabi talk about as the worst—You want to marry me just for that? I’d be a cliché.” She drew back from him in real anger.
Blue’s face remained cool, placid. “You don’t believe I would marry you just to have sex with you. You know, better than anyone, that you are the meaning in my life, the essence that fills each second of every minute I breathe. I am alive to keep you safe, to be your acolyte during the last few weeks of your life.
“Friend, suitor, married, not married, sex, no sex: I’ll have you whatever way I can. I suggested marriage because if we both wanted to have sex and not being married is the issue, I thought it would solve our concerns. But if you don’t want to, fine. Your preferences and your happiness are the reasons I’m here.”
Degree by degree, Josh relaxed against him. Finally, with a sigh, she tucked her head into the hollow between his head and his shoulder. He put his arm around her and stroked her hair.
“You almost sounded spiritual,” she murmured against his neck.
“No,” he said. “I meant every word literally.”
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They remained silent for a long time. Josh even slid into a light doze, until she startled herself awake with a jerk. “Blue?” she asked.
“Yes.” As if he was confirming his identity.
“You love me.”
“Yes.”
“I mean, really love me.”
“Yes.”
“Like married love me.”
“Married or not: it makes no difference to me. But by your definition, yes.”