The Tithe

by Elle Hill

  “You want to fight Elovah?” a male voice, threaded with amusement, asked.

  Hollyn slammed the rubber end of crutch down on the floor. The people nearest her jumped. “I’m tired of people using piety as an excuse to give up. I refuse to sit here and wait for death to come grab me. I mean, it doesn’t say anything in the Bit’ about submitting, mind and body, and waiting passively for an angel to snatch us like pickles from a jar.”

  “Does it say anything about that in the Bitoran?” a young woman around her own age asked Josh.

  “No,” Josh said.

  “So wanting to live isn’t a sin?”

  Heaven. Josh swallowed. She wished she’d kept her mouth shut about reading the Bitoran. “Life is a gift from Elovah,” she said into the silent room. “Who wouldn’t want to honor Her for Her gift?” Not exactly an answer. She hoped it sounded wise enough to forestall more questions about ethics.

  “I still don’t think we’re going to die,” a familiar-looking young woman argued.

  Josh stared at her a moment before remembering the woman had been willing to lie to the children—better the pretty lies than the ugliness of uncertainty.

  “Nobody’s making you think anything. Go ahead and pray while we talk about what to do,” Hollyn said.

  “So what do we know?” Marcus asked the room.

  “The angel comes once per day, at night,” someone said.

  “The lights go out, the angel swoops through the room and flies away with someone,” another person added.

  “It scares me,” the precocious girl who objected to purple having a scent—Josh needed to learn her name—announced.

  Several heads nodded in agreement.

  “Maybe we could all hold hands, form some kind of circle,” Hollyn suggested.

  “It didn’t help Millen,” Kann said bitterly.

  They were silent.

  “It can’t hurt to try,” someone said. “Maybe all of us holding on . . .” Her voice faded.

  “Or maybe we should consider scattering ourselves around the bunker at night,” Avery proposed.

  “Why?” Hollyn asked.

  He shrugged. “Getting more data is helpful when devising strategies. We know very little so far. None of us knows if the persons are randomly chosen, if others across the bunker will feel or experience anything when someone far from them is snatched.”

  They stared at him.

  “Are you suggesting we treat this as a scientific experiment?” RJ asked, lips pursed. She sat, leaning forward, just a few feet away from Josh, Lynna, and Blue.

  Avery pinched his face into a small, narrow-eyed smile that didn’t center well within his educated face. “I’m not so sure this isn’t already a big town experiment.” A few eyes rolled, a few bodies shifted in their seats. “But regardless, I suggest we try to glean as much information as possible, try to discern patterns if we’re to devise strategies.”

  Marcus was nodding. “I think it’s smart to try to figure out the, uh, rules. Maybe trying different things will help us.”

  “I don’t want to be alone when the angel comes,” the little girl said.

  Josh felt rather than heard the sighs: gratitude for the child saying what everyone else had been thinking.

  “Maybe tonight we’ll try Hollyn’s idea of holding hands,” Marcus said.

  “Thanks for making it official,” she said sweetly.

  He ignored her. “And then tomorrow we can try going with one other person into different parts of the bunker. What does everyone think?”

  After some discussion, most of them agreed to try it. Josh thought they were just happy to have someone give this terrifying experience a backbone, a little bit of structure. She suspected that they’d ultimately agree to anything, so desperate were they for guidance.

  “So, how do we go about this?” she asked finally. “Just sit around after dinner in a giant circle, everyone holding hands? That might lead to a lot of sweaty palms after a while.”

  “And what about when someone needs to, you know . . .” Lynna dropped her eyes and gestured toward the bathrooms.

  “Starting a little after seven, those who want can sit close to one another, ready to join hands. You can use the bathroom whenever you like,” Marcus said, very carefully not sighing.

  A plan, however weak, broadened smiles and inserted a little extra oomph into steps—or, well, hops or rolls. RJ bowed out of preparing dinner that evening, and Juss whisked into the kitchen in her stead.

  Two hours later, Josh sopped up a hearty, barley-saturated stew with her biscuits. She’d never tell RJ, but quiet Juss was one mean cook. She hoped he took over more often.

  Josh and Blue stood to do dishes, but RJ snapped at them to sit back down right away. Others, she said loudly, hadn’t yet had the pleasure of doing dishes. Propelled by her glares, a handful of people rose and trotted into the kitchen.

  After dinner, they did indeed sit in a circle, one that wound awkwardly around the center beam and its surrounding couch. Tithes drew their single chairs closer until their knees touched the knees of those on the couch. Everyone lingered within arm’s reach.

  Josh did have to use the bathroom, and she nearly stumbled three times trying to scoot past the circle of chairs. No angel swooped down while she did her business.

  A few people refused to join their circle. They sat alone, defiant in their singlehood, staring with painful nonchalance at the walls, their nails, the dimness of the three hallways. Just as desperate, Josh thought, and hoping their devotion and faithfulness would protect them. She understood.

  Conversations, as fragile and thready as lace, looped around their circle. Each member divided their attention in half, chatting with others while waiting for the lights to dim, the sound of feathers to slice through the air.

  An older woman and two young men sat opposite Blue and her. Josh wasn’t so certain she wanted to know, but the woman took one look at her and spewed forth her story. While Josh waded through tales of doctor’s visits and a diagnosis of ovarian cancer, she focused on the beautiful arc of gray hair that swept from the woman’s forehead. Silvery strands sparkled like metallic wires, curling and swooping back toward her crown.

  One young man, like Blue, remained silent, hands clenched in his lap. He would occasionally twitch, or the left half of his upper lip would vibrate in a series of tics. The other stared silently, raptly at the older woman as she unfolded her story.

  The plan included couch sitters reaching for their chaired friends, everyone reaching out until hands met in the middle. Josh would have preferred holding hands with Lynna on one side and Blue on the other, but she prepared to follow Marcus’ orders like a good girl.

  Netta, the older woman, chatted on about the horror of finding out she would serve as one of Newberry’s seven Tithes. The night stretched endlessly onward while conversations unwound in sticky strands. Above everything, the absence of a particular sound echoed most loudly.

  Josh was contemplating returning to the bathroom when the lights disappeared, as though a puff of air had blown them out. People gasped, but no one screamed. Hands stretched forward, seeking other wriggling fingers and sweating palms.

  Her heartbeat pounded in her throat. It could be her. It could be Blue. Or Lynna. Or Marcus, RJ, Avery. Or the others she’d come to know. It was like some kind of reverse lottery. Kind of like the Tithe itself.

  Amber light squeezed in from the arterial hallways, painting the room in vaguely sulfurous patches of light and shadows. She waited for the angel—the feathered wings, the inhuman white eyes—to swoop through the room.

  Josh touched the tips of someone’s fingers just as the snap of displaced air cracked through the room. A few people shouted, a couple sobbed. Josh rocked backward as Blue’s arms encircled her and yanked.

  “Stop it!” she hissed, lunging forward for Netta’s beige hand. Blue wrapped her in his arms, pulled her back against him, and threw his cloak over them.

  “Blue, stop!” she yelled, s
truggling, but he was stronger. Her movements jostled the cloak from her head, and one of her eyes peeked out onto the room. Opposite her, Netta and the young man held hands, safely tied to the rest of the circle through Lynna and Avery.

  As far as she knew, only she, Blue, and the determined loners remained isolated from their human circle. Her mouth dried, her breath rasping against the back of her throat.

  Wings thumped the air. Josh looked across the room and saw it. The angel. Not well, not enough to describe it later. Just a dark mass swooping through the room, dancing in the air, careening above their heads. Light struck it from various angles, casting the human-sized creature in varying shades of dark. Its clothing, if it wore any, refused to reflect the light properly. Its wings painted the air black.

  The angel existed in a mobile pocket of darkness. Except for its eyes, which reflected the jaundiced hallway lights.

  Its eyes did not focus on her.

  The harsh music of its wings crackled around them all. Whom would it pick?

  Josh, her movements long-since ceased, stared dumbly at the angel-sized darkness through her one uncovered eye.

  A muddied sibilance stirred the air near her face, and she realized she was praying.

  The angel hovered in the air for a moment before diving downward with a crack of air. Toward the opposite side of the support beam.

  Breath exploded from her mouth. At the same time, a feminine scream ripped through the darkness. Other shouts, although none tinged with the same terror, spilled forth.

  It had chosen. Josh closed her eyes and leaned against Blue.

  The angel’s wings sliced open the air, and then there was silence. The moment trembled before light pressed against her eyelid.

  A minute or more passed before she opened her eyes and pushed away from Blue. This time, he let her go.

  Netta and several others in the area glared at her. She had broken the circuit, skewed the data, compromised Avery’s experiment.

  She opened her mouth to ask, but a young, possibly teenaged, feminine voice called out, “It took Era. The angel took Era.” She sounded slightly out of breath.

  Several people murmured after that.

  “No, I was holding her hand,” the girl said loudly. “I felt her hand tug against mine. I couldn’t . . . I tried.” Her voice wobbled to a standstill.

  Josh caught the eyes of the woman who tended to Marcus.

  The woman nodded, rose, and scurried around the beam to find their leader.

  “I guess there’s no need to look for the girl,” she said.

  Netta further narrowed her eyes.

  Josh stared back for a moment, then wobbled to her feet. “I’m going to bed.”

  Blue followed her into the hallway. After they used the bathroom, she asked him to follow her into her room. Not for funny business, she emphasized, and he smiled very slightly.

  After they both sat on her bed, Josh leaned forward and said, “Don’t restrain me again, Blue.”

  “I’m keeping you safe,” he said, his posture stiff, his face pointed away from hers.

  She shook her head. “No one can keep anyone safe here.”

  Blue remained silent.

  “And even if you could, you can’t hold me against my will.”

  “I have to keep you safe, Joshua,” Blue said.

  “You have to?”

  “I want to. I want you to outlast every one of us.”

  Josh took a deep breath. “Okay, I get it.” Not really, but what could she say? “But you can’t decide for me. I’m in charge of me, of my body and soul. Only me.”

  His response came immediately. “Then let me protect you.”

  “I don’t need your protection,” she snapped.

  “You have it anyway.”

  She gritted her teeth, wondering if Blue had a distorted sense of her importance, or his. If an angel wanted her, no one’s arms would protect her. But he wanted to keep her safe. The gesture, if not the reality, flattered her. Annoyed—yes, that, too, but it was undeniably generous. Before coming here, Josh couldn’t think of anyone, ever, who had done something sweet for her.

  She sighed. “Blue, I really don’t—”

  “Please.” The word, emerging slowly, almost with two syllables, sounded rusty.

  Josh’s fingers tapped against the rumpled sheet. Finally, with another sigh, she asked, “Let’s be clear. Every time an angel comes, you want to—you know—h-hold me.” She cleared her throat.

  “I want to shield you from them.”

  Them? Did he think there was more than one? Heaven, she hoped not.

  Her fingers continued tapping. She stared at his expression, so calm and expressionless as he faced the door. It seemed to mean a lot to him, and, like it or not, they were now friends. Friends indulged one another, right?

  “All right,” she grumbled. “You can keep doing . . . this. But if I want to get away, you let me.”

  “I will protect you,” he said.

  She ground her teeth once again. “Let me rephrase,” she said slowly. “If I want to pull free from you, you will let me.”

  “You have free will,” Blue replied. “I can’t force my protection on you.”

  “You seem to have done a pretty good job of it so far,” she snapped. Josh ran a hand down her face. “You know, you are one infuriating friend,” she told him. “I’m only doing this because it seems to mean a lot to you, you know.”

  He smiled at the door. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Okay, I’m tired. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Subtle she wasn’t. “And by the way, it’s polite to say ‘goodnight’ before your friends go to bed. Goodnight, Blue.”

  Blue rose to his feet, approached the door. “Goodnight,” he said, and shut the door behind him.

  Her mind parsing through their conversation, Josh threw the pillowcase over the lamp, drew off her shoes, and slipped beneath the covers. Sleep proved elusive.

  Air flowed like silk around her face, tickling her lips. She turned her head, and a soft sound licked her ear. A scrape . . . no, a brush, a crackle of cloth. A feather against wood, perhaps.

  She could not see, but it didn’t alarm her. Her heart beat slowly, lazily in her chest and her breath stroked a pleasantly moist throat. A warm, golden feeling cradled her body as she reclined.

  Another sound hissed gently, quietly in the air. Near her, coming from her left. A gentle, rasping noise, perhaps skin brushing skin.

  Or feathers, her mind kept insisting. Please don’t forget the feathers.

  Josh gasped and jerked fully awake. Her eyes opened widely, or at least she thought they did. She lay in complete, unbroken darkness.

  Another sound from her left had her throwing her hands up before she could formulate a coherent thought.

  Someone threw themselves on her. Teeth bit into her left forearm, and she gasped.

  The angel, the angel! It had come for her sooner rather than later, as she’d known it would.

  Josh flailed beneath the angel, pushing against it, striking out as fiercely as a prone, half-asleep person could. She bunched up her fist and snapped it forward, and she swore she struck bone or cartilage. The angel barked out a breath.

  Something sharp and painful edged across her knuckles. At the same time, her nose registered the round, pungent scent of unwashed body.

  Josh heard herself grunting as she writhed under the partial weight of the angel. She punched forward again and again and felt the gentle breath of steel against her arms.

  Hearing her own utterance, the vocal center of her brain finally awakened.

  She screamed. Her legs may be weak and malformed, her feet misshapen, her legs below her knee in near-constant pain, but there was nothing wrong with her lungs. Josh drew in a breath and shrieked as loudly as a roomful of steaming teakettles.

  The weight atop her stiffened and let her push it away. It withdrew, feet scuttling the few steps to the door.

  Still, she screamed.

  The door opened a crac
k, and she saw the outline of a body slipping outside. She closed her mouth on the sounds pouring from her throat and pushed herself into a seated position on her bed, still holding her arms out in defense.

  Josh leaned to the left and found her little lamp had been unplugged.