The Tithe

by Elle Hill

  As the night dragged on, the air grew heavier. More metaphorically than actually, Josh thought, since this was the heaviness of dread, of the anger and desperation of helplessness. It was a room stuffed so full of emotion the very air felt stretched.

  Lynna and RJ retired and Garyn chatted with Avery, who sat near Josh and Blue.

  “I don’t know math,” Josh admitted to Blue as they sat together. She had clasped his hand in hers. Perhaps that risqué display would help convince everyone of her humanity. “I know the odds of losing someone I know and love are high. There are sixty-one of us left, and my friends and I number six. That’s like, what, one in ten chance? And every night the pool grows smaller.” Pressure in her ribcage made her lower her head and concentrate on breathing. In, out, in, out.

  You can control your walking pain. This is nothing.

  Blue remained silent and remote.

  In, out.

  Finally, after a moment, her breath huffed out angrily. “Is offering some solace too much to ask for?” she snapped. Not fair, a small part of her said. You appreciate him for his cooling silences, for the space to be you without expectation.

  She decided she felt too cranky, too worried, to care about fairness. After all, she was no angel.

  “I’m sorry,” Blue said. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what it feels like to grieve for the loss of friends.”

  “Don’t you care about Lynna or Avery? Or little Garyn?”

  “Not much.”

  Josh rocked back in surprise. “But . . . Avery likes you,” she said, rather inanely.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She wasn’t sure if he thanked an absent Avery or her for the information. Oh, this man! “But they’re your friends,” she reminded him.

  “They’re your friends,” he corrected.

  “Blue!” she said, aghast. “Well, what about me?”

  “I’ve told you, Joshua, there’s you and there’s everyone else. You’re the only person I care about.” He turned toward her, although his eyes seemed to peer over her head.

  Just below her diaphragm, her tummy filled with something hot. She wasn’t sure if it was awe, tenderness, horror, unease, or some combination.

  “Okay then,” she said finally. “Imagine losing me.”

  “I don’t like to do that,” he said. His emotional words conflicted with his dispassionate tone.

  “For just a minute. Now imagine me feeling that for all five of you.”

  Blue remained silent and motionless for a long time. Minutes passed. Josh had begun eavesdropping on Avery and Garyn’s conversation when Blue finally responded. “If that’s how you feel, I don’t know how you can eat or drink or talk.”

  Josh thought for a moment. “It hurts a lot,” she said slowly. “Most of us get through this by pushing it away for now and pretending the threat isn’t there. It’s how we survive each minute.”

  “And everyone pretends they don’t know everyone else is hurting inside.”

  “Well, and we pretend to ourselves, too. Most of the time, at least. Sometimes we can’t hide it anymore.”

  “This is why no one mentions it. No one wants to think about it themselves. And other people feel this and don’t want the others to hurt, too.”

  After a minute, Josh replied, “I think so.”

  “And now that I know you feel what I feel, only times five, and hurting because I know you’re hurting—this is empathy,” Blue said.

  “It’s a start,” Josh said, and her fingers caressed his.

  Minutes passed once again.

  “I’m sorry,” Blue said.

  “What?”

  “Sorry you feel that kind of pain. I don’t know how to pretend not to feel it, so I’m saying it.”

  Josh leaned against him for a moment. “I have a confession. I was trying to make a point about feeling bad about losing my friends. But . . .” She took a deep breath. “But I don’t feel equally for all of them, so it’s not an exact comparison. Some I, well, I like more than others.”

  “‘Someone I know and love.’”

  “Huh?”

  “You talked about the odds of losing someone you know and love. Am I someone you love, Joshua?”

  Josh stiffened against him. “I don’t . . . this is not . . . the way I feel . . . You can’t ask that kind of question!”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, because . . . it’s not appropriate.” She paused. “The truth is, it’s really intimate, and it, you know, makes me a little scared.” A moment of silence passed. Then, carefully, she asked, “Did you mean as a friend?”

  Blue seemed to stare over her head. How could eyes remain so bright and flat all at once? “I don’t know the difference between friend and suitor,” he said.

  Woman of the world she was, Josh felt her ears and cheeks warm. She hoped her face hadn’t actually flushed. “I’m not sure I know, either,” she admitted in a very low voice. What were she and Blue, anyway? Courters? Extra-good friends? Feeling the child she almost was—sometimes she forgot she was only twenty—Josh cleared her throat and tentatively began, “Can I ask—?”

  “Yes,” Blue said.

  “That was a precursor to a question.” Josh sighed. “I was going to ask another one.”

  “I’m learning these social conventions,” Blue said. “I’m not stupid—I’m ignorant.” He actually sounded the tiniest bit defensive. This place had changed them all. “I know what you were asking, and my answer to both questions is yes.

  “Yes, you may ask the question and yes, I love you. I don’t know the different kinds of it, but something this painful has to be what they call love.”

  Hardly the impassioned declarations she’d imagined on the very few occasions she’d allowed herself to fantasize about it. Of course, her fantasies had involved desert blossoms, poetic speeches, and sometimes a bowl of vanilla ice cream. Never had she imagined she would hear the words from a possible boyfriend in the underground prison where their god and town leaders warehoused the Tithes until the angels picked them off.

  Also, painful? Hardly the most romantic adjective.

  “Is it just painful?” she asked, somewhat stiffly, mostly in concern.

  Blue smiled at her, and her breath turned to wool in her throat. Maybe not entirely just friendly . . .

  “It’s so sublime and all-encompassing and uplifting, it overwhelms me. The happiness and the pain, they’re just degrees of the same thing. It’s like when you’re outside in the sun, and it warms you. But if you’ve never known what the warmth feels like, it burns, too.”

  “I’d never been in the sun before all this,” Josh said.

  “Are we still speaking metaphorically?” Blue asked.

  The wool had clogged somewhere in her chest, too. “Literally,” she said.

  “Neither had I,” he said. “It burned, didn’t it?”

  She remembered being overwhelmed by the infinity, the possibilities, of the outdoors. And then, seeing all those sights and feeling the heat scorch her, make her more pliable. After a minute, she nodded.

  And always, always, knowing they had so little time. She lowered her head, and her hand spasmed in his.

  “It burns,” Blue repeated.

  The angel came shortly thereafter. Josh crawled into the cocoon with Blue and closed her eyes against his chest. It was only his arms—in this moment, she was sure of it—that kept her safe from cold, grasping fingers.

  Seconds after the final crack of wings shattered the air, she threw off the safety of the cloak and stared about her.

  That night, a woman she didn’t even know had been taken. An older, very sick woman who had lain trembling in semi-consciousness in her tiny bed. Her caretaker’s eyes watered with sorrow, but his relief was palpable.

  So was everyone else’s.

  Most of the following two days flowed like water, pale and unremarkable. The stares continued, but no one asked Josh to officiate their wedding or recite verses from the Bitoran. Mos
t excitingly, Quinn let her remove the bandages from her hand and arm.

  On the second evening, someone finally cracked and spilled all over the Great Room. Few seemed surprised. Honestly, Josh had found the general lack of hysterics remarkable.

  Sira, she who missed the sun spinning around the planet, bounced into the Great Room. Clad in a flowing yellow garment, she looked not much different from the sheet-wearing woman from several days prior. Her light brown hair billowed from her head in a cloud of tangles.

  “I can’t find a way out!” she announced. “I’ve looked and looked and looked. The door at the top of a ladder is sealed tighter than an imrabi’s knees.”

  “It’s a sin to try and thwart Elovah’s will!” Netta announced. Lucky for all of them, she seemed willing to take on Jeet’s role as leader of the Holies.

  “Shut up,” Sira called out, almost absently. “Marcus, I looked for days. I can’t find anything. And it’s so dark, so musty, so . . . yellow here!” Standing a dozen feet from Marcus, she swept her arms toward the overhead lights.

  “Come here, and we’ll talk,” Marcus said soothingly.

  Sira glanced around. “Isn’t anyone else finding it hard to breathe? Seventy people. We’ve probably used up all the air.”

  “There are air recycling . . .” RJ began, but Sira wasn’t listening.

  “The air tastes like skin and sweat and dust!” she cried. “I’m breathing everyone in, cell by cell. Pretty soon I’ll have inhaled you all!” She clawed at the air, perhaps trying to rid it of skin cells.

  The room around her froze in an uncomfortable silence.

  The young woman paced the ground, back and forth, her hands wringing. “It’s so cold and dark in here. I don’t even know if it’s nighttime or daytime. We eat meals, but what does it matter? You could switch them, and we’d never know another day had passed.”

  “Sira,” Josh called out conversationally.

  Sira rubbed her arms, as if for warmth. “The only thing we have to divide up our days is the angel. She rises like the moon every night and steals another one of us. I can’t wait for it tonight. I can’t wait. What if it’s me tonight? What if it’s Marcus? Will we stop being orderly and organized and just be? What if it’s RJ? Will we starve or start fighting over the food? What if it’s none of those? What do we do? We wait. And wait and wait and wait and wait.”

  Several people shifted in their seats. No one looked at anyone else.

  Sira’s voice continued to rise. “I’m tired of waiting! I’m tired of eating and breathing and talking and looking for escapes and waiting. I hate this darkness, this constant nighttime! The fake days that pass like a dream, the fake nights like nightmares that end in sacrifice. I hate this place. I hate all of you. I hate Elovah and Her angel of death. What kind of cruel god tortures seventy people like this?” Several people glanced worriedly about. One person gasped. Sira’s voice sank an octave. “I just want the sun.”

  “Sira!” Josh called with more force. The young woman turned and faced her. Sira’s expression of anger and hopelessness floated above an underlying blankness that rendered Josh temporarily unable to speak. Finally, she said, “Go talk with Marcus. He has another assignment for you if you’re willing to take it.”

  Sira stared at her a moment. Finally, she said, “I hate you, too, Joshua Barstow. You’re no angel.” She turned and stomped toward Marcus.

  Josh clutched Blue’s arm in case he jumped up to defend her honor from this distraught young woman. “As I’ve tried to say a dozen times,” she agreed loudly.

  The first night of those two days, the angel took a young man Josh only knew on sight. On the second night, the angel returned for Izel, the young girl from Barstow who’d helped Josh seat the man—Ansel, she thought was his name—at the Tithing Feast. She barely knew her beyond that first day, filled with lavish and insincere feasts and the snap and fold of terrifying wings, but Izel had always beamed at her when Josh had shuffled by on the way to the bathroom or bed.

  Perhaps it was Izel’s age, or maybe that she hailed from Josh’s own Barstow, but on the second night, Josh joined in the hunt for the girl. Or maybe it was the terror of the first night, when Josh had shoved the girl to safety in hopes of sparing her. When no one could find the little girl, Josh slipped inside the nearest bathroom and locked herself in a stall. She emerged sometime later, shaky and puffy-eyed. Thank heaven, no one tried to talk to her.

  That night, she slept fitfully in Blue’s arms. In her dreams, she dove on silent wings to snatch children from the arms of wailing Tithes.

  Blue slept through her stretches. In truth, Josh tried not to wake him, since she kind of liked seeing him at rest: hair tousled, face relaxed from its usual geometric lines. Sometimes he twitched and on occasion, he slept with his mouth wide open. She made a mental note to ask him how he’d lost a tooth on the bottom near the back.

  Bit by bit, she disentangled herself from him and sat up on the bed. Blue mumbled and shifted behind her. She drew on her shoes and rose on unsteady legs from the bed. Her mouth tasted like dead rat. All right, she didn’t know exactly what dead rodent tasted like, but she imagined it bore a striking similarity to her mouth.

  Josh grabbed her toothbrush and toothpaste—one of the many creature comforts they’d unearthed in various storage closets—and scuffled toward the bathroom. After Sira’s comments last night about dust and skin cells, a shower sounded blissful.

  Inside the bathroom, Josh snagged a towel from one of the cabinets and headed toward the row of sinks. While her legs still allowed it, she should brush first. She could rest in the shower on that thoughtful, and possibly divinely inspired, concrete seat.

  Her nose wrinkled. She’d noticed it when she first walked in, but the bathroom smelled especially bad this morning. Someone with a tummy ache must have just finished in here. Maybe, given the smell, a small army of someones.

  Josh’s legs burned as she applied toothpaste to her toothbrush and started swishing it rather enthusiastically in her mouth. If only she could place a chair near the sink. Perhaps Blue would help her later on.

  She spat toothpaste and glanced in the mirror stretching over the row of ancient, metal sinks. Woodenly, automatically, she cupped water and rinsed out her mouth. Her toothbrush clattered into the sink.

  Josh turned from the mirror and faced the five stalls behind her.

  She’d first noticed the streaks of black-red on the gray walls of the last stall. When she turned, she saw the pool of red that stretched its fingers away from the scene as if it, too, wished to escape the horror. The pool sat unmoving; its edges had grown tacky.

  Globs of shiny red liquid suctioned to the wall, tacky and viscous like gobs of bloody snot. Josh’s stomach turned, and she clapped a shaking hand to her mouth.

  The pool, the streaks, the clumps of tacky liquid: All of these horrors, all of them, came from a female body crumpled on the floor in front of the toilet. She lay on her stomach, facedown in the largest of the horrible red puddles. From beneath her yellow dress, skinny legs splayed around the base of the toilet. Her uncovered arms, pale beige, almost white, twisted around her torso. Tangled hair had soaked up some of the red liquid, but at the base of the skull, it still clung in light brown clumps.

  Josh couldn’t see her face, but she recognized everything else about her. Sira, the young woman who had railed last night against their confinement.

  Sira, who couldn’t sit still for a moment, even when yelling at everyone, who had vibrated with aliveness not twelve hours ago. She lay still now.

  Was she alive? Surely not. There was so much blood. But . . . shouldn’t she check? Josh tried to walk to the young woman, but her feet wouldn’t move.

  What if she’s alive? Every second might be crucial.

  Legs trembling, Josh took a step toward her. Her legs lacked the energy to reach the Great Room and seek help. It was up to her to do what she could. She knew nothing of first aid, of healing in any capacity. Yes, but. But. Josh couldn’t lea
ve Sira here while she sat on the shower seat, waiting for her legs to rest.

  She can’t be alive after losing that much blood.

  Josh took another step toward the figure on the floor. Her legs shook, burned. Only seven or eight feet separated her from the . . . from Sira.

  “I should have waited for Blue,” she muttered. Her voice sounded teary. The skin looked so white, so . . . final. Chest tight, Josh took another step.