by Elle Hill
The Bitoran didn’t mention Ten Year by name. Although the concept existed in the holy book, the precise ritual had come about later, through one of the hundreds of town proclamations. The laws said up to age ten, children would devote themselves to learning and growing. Following that, they would balance their general education with an apprenticeship; over the next six years, their hours apprenticing would wax as their education hours waned.
Even Josh, an orphan, had experienced the Ten Year. Starting age ten, she had been apprenticed (a lovely term that often translated to free labor) as a cleaner. Until her legs had turned traitor on her, she’d been destined to scrub the rab’ri till the end of her days. What a waste that would have been! the imrabi often exclaimed after discovering her passion for books and her talent for categorizing and organizing. The irony, of course, was lost on no one.
There’s something worth examining in that lesson, Josh mused. What a safe and bland life I would have lived had I not become an unworkable. There must be a book in there somewhere: Living toward Dying, maybe, or Redeeming a Shortened Life.
Lynna cleared her throat, determinedly not in Josh’s direction. The latter lifted her head with a jerk. “Oh, yeah. Ten Year.” Witty. “The Bit’ doesn’t mention it and a lot of scholars debate it. A bunch of them say children after the age of ten are considered adults in Elovah’s eyes and judged by their thoughts and actions just like we are.”
“I’m nine,” Garyn volunteered.
Josh nodded at her. “According to most scholars, you’re good to go. Even if they’re wrong, though, and everyone is judged ‘based on the contents of their hearts and deeds,’ as the Bit’ says, I think you’re in the clear. You’re a pretty good girl, right?”
Garyn nodded. “My dad says I am. My teachers all like me.”
“The Book of Salvation says if we work hard, treat others with kindness, and devote ourselves to our communities as if to Her, we’re sparkling good. You seem like a kind person and hard worker.”
Garyn’s eyes widened. “I haven’t worked since coming here.”
Josh spent a moment looking at this girl’s tiny frame, her dark, drawn face. She wondered what ailment gnawed her from the inside out.
“You’ve earned a right not to worry about that here,” Lynna said, shaking her head. “Your work for the community is being here.”
Josh agreed. She also knew how impotent she felt with her wonky legs and her bandaged hands.
“You can help me,” Blue said. Josh turned startled eyes to him. “I would like to help out in the kitchen, but RJ tells me to grab utensils, and I don’t know where she pointing. Maybe you and I could help her in the kitchen later today.”
Garyn inclined her head with a jerk, like nothing so much as a bright-eyed bird. “You can’t see,” she reminded him. “I know you don’t mind it, because I don’t miss purple not smelling, but sometimes seeing can be handy.”
Smiling, Josh put her hand on Blue’s shoulder and rose to her feet on a surge of affection. “I need to talk to Marcus,” she muttered.
“How do you walk and run and recognize your friends and stuff?” Garyn, sitting forward, asked.
Smiling, Josh shuffled on unsteady legs to the front of the room.
When she was seventeen or so, Josh had discovered a book written by an author from one of the smaller towns—Phelan, maybe—about a young coyote who saw her first human and fell desperately in love with him. She prayed that night to Elovah to become a human so that she might be with the youth.
“I can do this,” Elovah told her, “but the consequences will be dire. Coyotes weren’t meant to walk on two feet.”
“Whatever the consequences, I accept them!” she cried, and so Elovah transformed her from a coyote into a human woman. Overjoyed, she took a step—and cried out when a scorpion stung her foot.
But no, there was no scorpion. She took another, more tentative step. And screamed.
This, then, was the consequence. Every step felt as if a scorpion were stinging the bottoms of her feet. But she had made her choice, and with gritted teeth, she stumbled to the town in which her human lived.
The rest of the story was fuzzy in Josh’s brain. She thought it ended in tragedy, as such stories often do. Wrapped in transparent crystal in her memory was the description of a woman who, for love, chose to walk through the rest of her life on feet that seared with agony. Even if the story had ended on a matrimonial kiss, would her choice have been worth it?
Josh snorted. She had some pretty strong opinions on the topic.
Speaking of foot pain, her eyes scanned the area around Marcus. Next to him sat one of the armless chairs. He stood talking with some tall, cadaverously thin man with a crop of curly black hair. Perry, or maybe Perris. Organizing genius she may be, but remembering names—
Movement to her left, and then a body slammed sideways into her. By the time she cried out in surprise, her right side had already hurled with a thud to the floor.
The person who hit her, a short and burly man with a face like a fist full of gray clay, tossed a look of contempt over his shoulder as he strode away. He had beautiful, dark-fringed brown eyes topped with thick brown brows.
A flutter of black cloth snagged her attention, and she watched in awe as Blue glided with a blindingly swift, floating grace toward the man who had knocked her down. He was beautiful, swooshing as silently, mercilessly, and coldly as a bird of prey.
Perhaps reacting to her expression, the man stopped and turned startled eyes in Blue’s direction. It must look like a black-clad ghost swooping toward him to enact vengeance.
She remembered what had happened the last time someone had hurt her.
“It was an accident!” she blurted before Blue could reach the man.
Face still expressionless, Blue stopped not five feet from the man.
I believe him, she thought. I believe he would have killed that man. “Blue, please come here and help me,” she said quietly.
He came without hesitation.
She did need his assistance. The right side of her body throbbed and her right arm, which sported one of the deep knife wounds, sang an operatic song of pain. Really, she should carry aspirin with her at all times.
She felt silence encircle her and looked up to find Marcus staring at her with narrowed eyes. He made a move toward her, and she shook her head.
Blue approached her and with infinite gentleness guided her to her feet. Hand on her elbow, he helped her to the nearest unoccupied chair.
“Was it an accident, Josh?” Marcus asked after she had situated herself.
The Bitoran forbade lying. However, fundamental to its teachings was a respect for life of all kinds. Only Elovah and the angels could decide when lives had been spent. When lying protected someone’s life, what righteousness lay in truth?
“Yep,” she said. Next to her, Blue stood tall and silent. Into the nervous silence choking conversation, she added loudly, “No need to worry, folks. I’ve fallen before and will probably do it again.”
They turned from her, then, and began or continued conversations in stilted tones.
Narrow-eyed, Marcus walked to her. “What did you want to talk about?” he asked. His eyes twitched upward toward Blue.
“I wanted to see if you’d found out anything about the person who . . . visited me the other night,” she said.
Were the two incidents related? Might that have been the person who broke into her room? Remembering the spark of fury—more, disgust—in the man’s beautiful eyes, she shuddered. What had she done to earn anyone’s hatred?
Blue’s hand brushed against her arm.
“I’m sorry, Josh,” Marcus said, shaking his head.
She nodded. “Yeah, well,” she said, “thanks.” She rubbed her hand along her aching right side.
“Since you’re here, I’ll tell you my new plans. I’m going to spend late evenings in my room. I found it much easier on me when I’m alone during the visits.”
Josh nodded. Sh
e’d been expecting this. What leader, after all, wanted his followers to see him twitching on the ground after surviving a “harvesting,” as Blue called them?
Five minutes later, she and Blue made their way back to the couch. Lynna fussed over her, offering to grab breakfast for her. As difficult as it was for her to, Josh let her.
Following breakfast, Garyn skipped over to Avery for her morning reading lessons. She already knew the alphabet, she bragged; today she learned how to put the sounds together.
After squeezing Josh’s shoulder, Lynna made her way to the kitchen in a move suspiciously similar to Garyn’s excited skip.
Josh sat in a thick, although not unpleasant, silence with Blue. Several minutes passed before he asked in his inflectionless tone, “Was it an accident?”
She opened her mouth to lie to him, made a brief noise, and then stopped.
“I didn’t think so,” he said.
“Then why did you stop?”
“Because you asked me to.”
She sat there for a long moment then finally said, “But I asked you not to harm anyone, and you said you’d do it, anyway.”
“I don’t want to needlessly upset you. That’s as bad as hurting you. If I thought that person who pushed you down was a threat, I would kill them to keep you safe. But this person was a bully, not a murderer. If you want me to leave them alone, I will.”
Josh shook her head. “You can’t k—harm someone just to keep me safe.”
“There are many things I can’t do. That is not one of them.”
It should offend her, shock her, chill her to have someone discuss murder so blithely. Mostly, she just felt frustrated.
“I’m not the imrabi you seem to think I am,” she snapped. “I haven’t done anything to deserve a bodyguard or an avenging angel.”
He faced straight ahead, eyes clear and calm. “You saved us that night,” he said.
She huffed a sigh. “I’m blunt. And kind of unpolished. I say things that make people cringe. I even use the term ‘crazy,’ even though Ima Emm would have lectured me for hours for that kind of disrespect.”
Blue waited a moment. “Is that all?” he asked politely.
“No,” she grated. “I’m also a little bossy. And I used to think uncharitable thoughts about Minnabi Chester. And—” She lowered her voice. “I slept in the same bed with someone before getting married.”
“Do you mean me?” Blue asked in the same gray tone.
“Of course!” Josh gasped.
“Then would you like to get married?”
“I—no! Why would you—What?”
“I wasn’t sure which part you were objecting to.”
Josh opened her mouth, sputtered briefly, and then stopped. Finally, she leaned back against the softness of the couch and laughed. She wasn’t sure what struck her as humorous: Conversing with a man whose endearing, scary, and altogether odd sense of propriety and, well, ethics she kept trying to keep in check?
Or perhaps it was the disconnect between being a walking, breathing sacrifice for the greater good . . . and yet continuing to live her life as if she still had one.
Time passed in that silent, empty way it has. Shortly after the noon hour, Josh decided to wander into the kitchen for, she was slightly embarrassed to admit, peanut butter and crackers. Darn that Hollyn for cementing it into her memory! She told Blue to remain seated while she zipped into the kitchen and back. RJ and others wouldn’t mind her grabbing a few things.
The kitchen was unpopulated and oddly dim, if not completely dark. She’d never found it anything but well lit.
Her aching legs halted. What if . . .? Well, what if?
No. It couldn’t be for her benefit. She’d only just decided to grab a snack. No one could have known.
Josh shuffled from the door of the kitchen toward the other side of the room, where the cupboards lay. In the dim, abandoned room, her footsteps sounded like a group of people crumpling paper. Subtle she was not.
Right before she reached the island in the center of the room, she heard a sound. A slight rustling of cloth. She held her breath.
A moment later, she heard the same rustling sound, this time followed by a faint crackle of paper.
Step by step, Josh drew nearer to the island and closer to the sound. She heard paper rattle.
Finally, taking a deep breath, she walked around the island . . . and found the teenage boy, Kadin, the one who had shut her in with the angel, sitting on the floor. Sitting on the ground between his spread legs was a large, paper container from which tiny white grains drifted to the floor.
Kadin’s eyes gleamed, blue and feral, in the dim lighting as he scooped a handful of sugar and guided it to his mouth. A viscous substance coated his lips and the corners of his mouth. As he smeared more sugar into his mouth, white crystals coated the lower half of his face and trickled from his hands and overflowing mouth to the sticky ground below.
Eyes never moving from hers, Kadin opened and closed his mouth in a toddler’s version of chewing. The white grains on his lips turned sticky, oozed down his face and trickled onto his brown shirt. His right hand clutched the bag of sugar in a grip so tight his hand shook.
A sticky tongue emerged from his mouth and slicked over his shellacked lips.
Swallowing several times in a row, Josh turned and scuffled out of the kitchen and back to her comfortable, well-lit seat on the circular couch and next to Blue.
Several minutes later, after Blue fetched Marcus for her, a group of three people, including Marcus and Quinn, the healer, entered the kitchen and exited shortly thereafter with an unkempt, sticky, and scowling Kadin. His eyes poured heat and danger into hers as he exited the kitchen between two people. He still clutched a handful of sugar in his left hand.
In the smaller hours of the afternoon, the teenaged girl who’d asked her to pray with the group approached Josh once again. By then, Josh and Blue had done some busy work for RJ and entertained Garyn while she extolled the many virtues of H’s (“Did you know they change a ‘ssss’ sound to a ‘sh’?”). Later, they sat in desultory silence, occasionally and lazily discussing random topics.
“Hi, Mare,” Josh said.
“Hi,” the girl said shyly, smiling.
Who said her memory for names was shameful? “I can guess why you came over here,” Josh said, giving her a return smile.
The girl ducked her head. “Kinda. We’re holding a service and wanted to know if you wanted to lead it.”
Josh huffed. Was there a reason this group always sent the shyest and youngest of their members to ask her to participate? Of course, she thought. It was hard to say no to that earnest face.
“I’d rather not,” she said. Hard, but not impossible. The girl’s face creased into worry lines. “But I’ll attend,” she hastened to add.
Mare nodded slowly. “We were thinking four o’clock in Jeet’s room.”
“I don’t know Jeet.”
“I’ll come get you sometime around four. Well, um, see you then.” The teenager scurried away.
“I have maybe five years on her, but I feel so much older,” Josh commented absently.
“Age does seem a poor means for classifying people,” Blue agreed.
“Are you going to the service?”
“Yes.”
“Because I’m going, right?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head, rubbed her bandaged hand. “These are the last days of our lives. You really want to spend them doing things you don’t want?”
“I don’t want to be where you’re not.”
Shortly thereafter, Mare escorted them both to a room halfway down one of the hallways. Eight people already cramped inside the tiny space. Only standing space remained—barely.
“Unless someone plans to cradle me in their arms throughout, we’re going to need to find a new venue,” Josh announced. “That’s not an invitation,” she murmured to Blue.
The eleven of them relocated to the laundry area. Mare
waved and smiled at Ryland, who grinned and scuttled away. This new room, at least, contained a sizable bed and three chairs. Josh got one.
Across the not-so-spacious room, Netta, she whose hands Josh had not clasped, sat primly, long skirt tucked demurely around her legs and eyes staring straight ahead. Next to her sat one of the young men from the other night.
A tiny, dark woman, bushy white hair drifting upward in waving clumps, scooted to what they were evidently using at the front of the room.
