The Tithe

by Elle Hill

“Is it an angel?” a child’s voice asked.

  Several voices broke out then, some in shouts, some in startled cries, one or two in terror.

  Just like the night before, the fold and crack of feathered wings in motion breathed through the room. Weak light from the multiple hallways leaked through the perimeters. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the sudden darkness, Josh found she could identify vague outlines.

  Someone a few seats down leapt to her feet and hurled herself toward Josh, perhaps seeking the sterile safety of the kitchen. She stumbled over Josh’s outstretched legs and hurtled to the ground. Josh gasped in pain.

  And still, the snap and sigh of wings overhead.

  Josh wanted to stand up, to defend herself. She wanted to shrink into the upholstery, to make herself as small as possible. In the end, she sat still, trembling in indecision.

  “The angels!” someone cried in something like terror, or perhaps ecstasy.

  “Keep them away from me!” Someone—she thought it might be Len—shrieked.

  Several people jumped to their feet and pushed their way through the room, seeking some kind of safety. The woman who’d tripped over Josh lay whimpering on the ground.

  Whump, whump . . .

  A warm arm encircled Josh’s shoulder. She shrieked before realizing it belonged to Blue. The baggy sleeves of his black tunic partially covered her head. She turned to him, and he pressed her closer.

  I don’t think I want to court you, she remembered him saying, and almost sprayed laughter. Who knew they’d practically snuggle later that day?

  The thump of wings grew closer. An outline of a human-sized object hurtled through the air and the darkness toward her. What had to be its wings spread around it, moving and tilting. Some stray ray of light gleamed whitely off the area where eyes should be. They seemed fixed directly on her.

  She stared straight ahead, feeling the cool air once again encircling her, sipping her. It had come back for her.

  Blue threw his cloak around her, then, completely covering her head and shoulders. Face mashed against his chest, black cloak hiding her head, she could no longer see the angel diving toward her. She struggled uselessly against him.

  Another thump like a heartbeat pulsed directly overhead, and something—the wind, a feather, a hand—stirred the hair on her arm. Her breath stopped. Sound ceased for a brief moment. Even her heart paused in expectation. The moment stretched, sticky and slow.

  And then sound returned, popping around her ears like a burst bubble. A woman called someone’s name, a man’s voice shouted in something like horror. Josh closed her eyes and sucked in a watery breath. Against her cheek, Blue inhaled slowly, calmly.

  A giant crack, coming from somewhere behind them, split the air, and the sound of wings disappeared. The room’s inhabitants quieted from yells to gasps and whimpers.

  A few seconds of confused talking ended when a man’s voice called, “It took him!”

  People gasped. Josh pushed hard against Blue, and the cloak slipped from her head. The lights had returned.

  The Tithes had all turned toward the shouter, a large, dark-skinned man with hair bleached butter yellow. Below his muscular torso, his right leg twisted like an old branch. He gestured with his muscular arms toward the ceiling. “I was holding him tight, and all of a sudden he was gone!”

  “Who?” Josh called.

  “My friend, Millen!” he yelled, as if the information should be obvious. “He’s gone!”

  “Maybe he got up and ran somewhere?” someone asked.

  “No!” the man insisted, pounding the air for emphasis. “I was holding him and he was holding me, and then those eyes came toward us.” He looked down toward his lap and shuddered. “And then he was gone like he wasn’t there to begin with. All of a sudden I was holding air, not him.” Tears rolled like marbles down his face.

  “Anyone else know Millen?” Josh asked. After a silence, she snapped, “Speak up.”

  “I do,” someone said, and another echoed her.

  “Is he anywhere in the vicinity?” she asked.

  They looked around awkwardly, helplessly.

  “I don’t see him,” the second voice ventured.

  “We need to look for him,” she said. “You”—she pointed—“take some people and check out that hallway. You”—she gestured toward the second person— “take a few others and look in that hallway. Be thorough.”

  A feminine scream stung the air. Josh looked toward the front of the room, where Marcus always stood. She couldn’t see him.

  A woman, maybe ten years older than Josh, her brown hair thinning and her face deathly pale with illness or fright, stood wringing her hands. Josh had never actually seen someone wring their hands.

  “Marcus is dead!”

  Chapter 4

  A quarter-hour later, Lynna plunked down with a sigh on the couch next to Josh. The red-haired woman handed Josh a glass of moderately cold water and leaned back against the support beam.

  “How is he?” Josh asked, sipping.

  “Embarrassed.”

  Josh sighed. “We’re the last people he should feel embarrassed around.”

  Lynna rolled a smile around her face. “That’s what I told him,” she said.

  “So he fainted?”

  “No. Marcus has a sickness called epilepsy. It’s a seizure disease.”

  Josh nodded. “I’ve heard of it. So fear can trigger it, I’m guessing?”

  “Stress, he said.” Lynna shook her head. “What about the missing man—Millett?”

  “Millen. No one has found him yet, but we have one more hallway to check.” She darted a glance at her friend, the disbeliever.

  Lynna stared ahead of her, lips pursed.

  Josh angled her body to the left. Blue’s profile, sharp and proud, carved into her view. “You tried to save me,” she said.

  “Yes,” Blue said.

  She drew in a breath, held it. Finally, she blurted, “Why?”

  Blue sat rigidly, motionlessly. Was that a result of his blindness or a quirk all his own? “It’s what you would have done,” he said.

  She drew back from him. In fact, sitting there with the breath of an angel brushing through her hair, she hadn’t thought about anyone but herself.

  “Weren’t you scared?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Then why try to save me?”

  He lifted his chin very slightly and blinked. “I wasn’t scared for me.”

  What in heaven? How could someone she barely knew be more worried about her than himself?

  Maybe he’s not, she told herself. Maybe he clung to you out of terror and is trying to reframe it in a more heroic light. Sure, except . . . well, she didn’t think Blue would lie. Heaven, she didn’t think he knew how to lie; it wasn’t a lesson he’d learned from his imrabi. The man was too honest, too unpolished, for polite company.

  Finally, she turned toward him once again and demanded, “Why do you care what happens to me?”

  Even in profile, she saw the smile curve his lips toward the ceiling. She’d never seen him smile before. “Joshua Barstow,” he said in his expressionless voice, “I have so much to learn from you.”

  Minutes later, searchers announced Millen could not be found.

  “It took him,” his friend, named Kim or Cam or something, insisted through his teeth.

  “Was it an angel?” the same child who’d asked the same question before demanded.

  No one responded for a moment.

  “Did anyone see anything?” Marcus asked from his seated position at the front of the room.

  Feathered wings, a silhouette, streaming black hair, glistening teeth, metallic skin, gleaming white eyes (Josh twitched a little at that), a fashionable robe spun from dark linen.

  Several eyes turned toward the woman who’d mentioned linen.

  “I worked in a textile mill,” she insisted with a sniff. “I know how light looks on linen, even black linen.”

  “Several
of us saw wings?” Marcus, minus his usual energy but with the same quiet confidence, asked. At least half of the people nodded. “And a human body attached?” Fewer heads nodded.

  “An angel,” a voice breathed.

  Several others murmured in rapturous agreement.

  “An angel that kidnapped one of the Tithes,” Lynna said sharply. When several pairs of hostile eyes turned toward her, she dropped her gaze and crossed her arms over her ample chest.

  “Elovah can’t kidnap what’s Hers,” an older man snapped at her.

  “That was scary,” the child who’d asked if it was an angel insisted.

  “I can’t disagree with her,” Marcus said, his smile wry.

  “Only because you fear Elovah’s judg—” a voice began.

  “Oh, come on,” Josh said. “Every single one of us was scared out of our minds. Most of us either tried to run away or were too scared to do anything but hold on.”

  “How come angels are scary?” the child persisted.

  She had probably driven her mother crazy with all her questions. Josh liked her.

  Silence. A little more silence. Finally, someone said with a confidence too loud and assertive to contain any truth, “Elovah’s ways are unknown to us. We probably can’t understand it because we’re so unenlightened.”

  Josh sighed. “We don’t know why they’re scary,” she said. “The Bitoran mentions them as being beautiful and bringing about miracles to the holy. But they brought death to the Twelves, who found them terrifying. Maybe the angels can be many things.”

  “But we’re holy!” someone called.

  “Speak for yourself,” Josh said, smiling.

  Several people stared at her, wide-eyed.

  “Is it going to come for us again?” Lynna asked quietly. Somehow, everyone heard her.

  “Yes,” Blue said.

  People, including Josh, turned to him in surprise. “What makes you say that?” she asked.

  He faced forward, not even bothering to pretend he gazed at any of them. “We all know it. They will come and take us, one by one.”

  Amazing how utterly silent a room filled with sixty-nine people could get. Although she couldn’t, wouldn’t say it in front of the others, yeah, she did believe the angels would whisk each of them away. But if that were true . . .

  “Why didn’t it take Josh last night?” Lynna asked, confusion or fear emboldening her to raise her voice and her eyes.

  They all turned to Josh then, staring with everything from awe to, of all things, distrust.

  Heart throbbing in her throat, she stared back.

  “Josh is special,” Blue said in his flat tone.

  The silence that followed pressed against Josh’s chest until even drawing a breath hurt.

  Finally, Hollyn uttered a rusty sound, her version of a chuckle. “Well,” she said. “Somebody’s got a crush.”

  Josh, with a slight nudge from Lynna, rose unsteadily to her feet. “I’m going to bed,” she announced to the room.

  “It’s only—” someone began.

  “I’m tired,” she snapped. In truth, she’d had enough—of them, of angels, of the pressure to appear poised and confident when her insides quaked.

  Next to her, Blue stood.

  “Where are you going?” she asked with a sigh. What if people thought she and Blue . . .?

  “I’m tired, too,” he said.

  She took a breath to tell him to give her a moment’s peace, already, but then she stopped. Who in heaven was she to care about whether people thought she and Blue were a couple? Josh Barstow, headstrong and fierce, worried her fellow unworkables might think she had a suitor? Please.

  Josh shrugged.

  They shuffled—well, Josh shuffled and Blue walked carefully with a lubricated, long-legged fluidity that she would never know again—to the hallway she’d slept in last night. After each visiting the bathroom, Blue proceeded without a word to a tiny bedroom three doors down.

  As the Twelve author, Lesleigh Something-or-Other, wrote, “We spend our lives polishing ourselves until we reflect back the expectations reflected at us by others. Living between mirrors, we fade into the distance until, in our shiny reflectiveness, we find we have disappeared.”

  Nah—Blue was just strange.

  “Goodnight,” she muttered to the empty hallway.

  Josh chose the room directly across from Blue. She wanted to be close to the bathroom, but sharing a wall with him seemed a little . . . intimate.

  The room measured no more than eight by eight, reminding her of her little cell back at the rab’ri: a narrow bed, a nightstand with a tiny, ceramic lamp, and a minuscule dresser with two drawers. She collapsed onto the bed: a little hard, but not too bad. An ugly green blanket, identical to the one from this morning, dented beneath her derriere. The fabric pulled back from the narrow pillow, and she caught a glimpse of crisp white sheets.

  Josh removed her boots and used her left shin to massage her right leg below the knee. She had no books to net her random thoughts, no music of overhead footsteps. Even the air, stale and sterile and entirely familiar, lent itself to introspection.

  After a while, Josh lay back on the bed, hands behind her head. She wasn’t truly tired. She’d needed some time to think, to be alone. The companionship, the talking, the crowd, the press of feelings and bodies and conflicting ideas: she needed a break. Away from them all, her muscles unclenched, her thoughts unsnarled.

  Here was what she knew: She and the other Tithes were sacrifices to Elovah. Josh didn’t disbelieve in Elovah, but she’d always viewed the Tithing ritual with the suspicion borne of personal welfare. (Where, in the Bitoran, did it say Tithes had to have physical and mental differences? But anyway . . .) Here, among the dozens of other unworkables—or “incapacitated citizens,” as they apparently called them in Piñon Hills—touched twice by an angel, she knew her time was limited. Everyone’s was. She likely had at most sixty-nine days, as few as one.

  But if an angel took one person per day, why was she still here?

  Yeah, that was the question. Blue’s response, sweet or creepy or whatever it was, just didn’t explain why she, trapped in a room with an angel, woke up the next morning still, well, corporeal. Millen hadn’t.

  Or maybe he would. Josh had read hundreds, perhaps thousands, of books. She knew from science books not to form conclusions before collecting all the data. Who knew what happened to her throughout the night? Maybe Millen, like her, would show up tomorrow, well rested. Perhaps the sacrifice didn’t mean death after all.

  Maybe tomorrow would bring surprises. As she’d read somewhere, a smart observer will not create a constellation from a single star. She needed more information in order to find a pattern. Tomorrow she would revisit these considerations.

  From there, her thoughts flowed in lazy, unbound channels. How would they clean their clothes? Did Lynna have a crush on Marcus? Had Ima Christina or anyone else from the rab’ri thought of her all day? What would RJ make for breakfast tomorrow? Blue was certainly an odd character. She’d never much liked the color blue, but against his dark skin, she admitted the color was striking. Would anyone else sleep in this wing?

  After a long time, her flood of thoughts narrowed to a trickle. Finally, without even noticing, Josh floated into sleep.

  Angels, beautiful and ferocious, careened throughout her dreams. Josh awakened more than once with a start, eyes darting. She’d forgotten to turn off the ceramic lamp before drifting off, so the tiny room held neither shadows nor surprises.

  Finally, she sat up, bleary-eyed and scowling. Her wonky big toe poked out of the covers. She threw the top half of the blanket over it. What genius thought it was a good idea to throw a bunch of refugees underground and not include clocks everywhere? Was it three a.m.? Seven? Noon? Given the state of her bladder, she leaned more toward the seven, but she had no way of knowing.

  In the privacy of her own room, she performed her morning foot and leg stretches. Twenty minutes later, she stumbled
into the Great Room.

  A few people walked or sat in the room. Some of them, like her, glared from between gummy eyelids. Good to know she wasn’t the only one troubled by last night’s events.

  Several dozen feet from her, sitting in the same spot he had yesterday, Blue turned his head toward her and rose to his feet. How did he know—? She scoffed. Josh Barstow, master shuffler. Without her boots, she found movement and balance elusive goals. Even with them, she could manage no more than, at best, an uncoordinated clomp.