The Tithe

by Elle Hill

  She focused on the tangle of brown hair covering Sari’s crown. Hair in need of a good combing: such a norm—

  Sira’s right arm twitched.

  Josh’s heart exploded in her head, turning her vision gray. Distantly, she heard a high-pitched cry, and then her vantage point came from much lower.

  Sitting spread-legged on the ground, her shoes almost touched the edge of the blood. Josh used her arms and shaking, burning legs to scrabble backward.

  The door to the bathroom slammed against the wall, and Blue strode inside.

  “I’m here,” she called breathlessly.

  He reached her before she’d finished speaking and caught her outstretched hand.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, kneeling beside her.

  “Sira . . .” Josh began. “I walked in and saw her. I thought, all that blood, you know, she must be dead. And I thought I should check and see if I could help but she moved, so I think she’s alive. But how can someone be alive after losing that much blood?”

  Shut up, shut up. You’re sounding like a blathering child. Josh took a deep breath.

  Blue stroked her hair, her cheek. “I need to get someone who can help. Can you stand up?”

  Josh took another breath. “My legs hurt too much. Go get someone. I’ll, uh, I’ll stay here.”

  Blue ran another hand over her head, rose, and left the bathroom in a near-run.

  Sira was dead. Quinn confirmed it shortly after arriving. Twenty minutes after Blue left it, the bathroom contained several people: Quinn, Marcus, Lynna, Blue, Josh, and two strong-looking people, a woman and a man, whose names Josh almost knew. And Sira, of course.

  “The dead can move after death,” Quinn reassured Josh. She explained the stiffening of the body that occurs after an hour or more of death. Josh quietly thanked her.

  Lynna sat on the floor to the left of Josh, holding her hand. Blue sat on her right. He had thrown his arm around her shoulder.

  “I’m fine,” Josh kept telling them. “Sira’s the one who needs attention.”

  Lynna patted her hand and Blue ignored her words.

  Her previous reaction shamed her. Imrabi dealt often with death, but Josh . . . she had tended the library. Still, Sira might have needed her, and she acted like a frightened toddler.

  “How did she die?” Josh called out.

  Quinn turned briefly her way. “Exsanguination.”

  Didn’t “sanguine” mean “happy and healthy”? So, Sira died from loss of happiness?

  “It means blood loss,” Blue murmured in her ear.

  How did he know that? And . . . “Did she hurt herself?”

  Marcus faced her then. He stood near the foot of the scene, his expression grave. “We found a kitchen knife near her left hand.”

  First Len, now Sira. Josh’s chin dropped to her chest.

  “I think my legs can—are okay,” she said. “I’d like to go to my room now. After using the bathroom—but not this one.” When she rose, she surprised herself by hugging Lynna. “Thank you,” she whispered into the joyful riot of orange curls.

  Minutes later, she lay in the cot, staring at the wall. Blue sat behind her on the bed, stroking her back. It felt wrong to find pleasure in living, but his caresses soothed her.

  “I don’t want to get up today,” she announced to the wall. “I take it all back.”

  “Then stay here,” Blue agreed.

  “Would you, maybe, lie down, too?”

  And so he lay behind her, cradling her, while she stared at the wall before her and tried to forget the white-pale woman and the fingers of blood stretching toward her.

  Josh, hand wrapped firmly around Blue’s, entered the Great Room well after noon. Everyone stared, but she’d expected it. Without asking Marcus, Josh and Blue strode to what they’d come to think of as the front of the room. Every mouth closed.

  “We need to honor our dead,” Josh told them all. “Thirteen people have died, and we’ve never said a word for them. I want to change that. I’m not an imrabi, but I attended services twice a day every day of my life and observed countless ceremonies. If I’m the closest we have to a holy person, then I will lead us in honoring the lives we’ve lost.”

  “We don’t know the ones taken by the angel are dead,” a voice objected.

  “They’re dead to us,” Josh said gently. “If anyone has any more objections, I invite you to leave the room for a few minutes. The rest of us will recognize the lives of the dead and say prayers for them.”

  No one left the room. After her very brief ceremony, Josh invited the Tithes to share stories about the departed. Few had stories, but the talk soon evolved into reminiscences of their lost lives and the loved ones they’d never see again. Two short, bittersweet hours passed, during which they talked as an entire group rather than in smaller clumps.

  Fifty-seven isn’t such a big number, Josh thought.

  The rest of the day jerked along like, as Sira had said, a dream. Amazing how the horror of so much pain and blood in the morning could relax later in the day into a somnolent boredom.

  It’s barbaric how quickly we adapt. Maybe a time will come when Lynna and RJ and Avery have left and I’ll grieve and then move on to thinking about dinner. She couldn’t even begin to imagine Blue leaving her.

  She shook herself out of such dark thoughts and asked Lynna to tell her more about her life before being tithed.

  RJ took pity on her and let her help make dinner. Josh chopped onions into perfect little wedges while Blue stirred the stewpot and RJ muttered to herself. Juss fluttered like an efficient butterfly, gathering ingredients, punching puffy dough, and navigating the empty spaces in-between the rest of them.

  The vat meat stew overflowed with flavor: sweet carrots, tangy onions, salty gravy. When Josh commented on the deliciousness of the meal, RJ told her gruffly how everything tasted better after witnessing death.

  They rested after that, bellies and minds full. The evening waned.

  Josh drifted closer and closer to Blue. She ended up resting her head on his shoulder as they waited for the angel. Tithes stole glances, but she didn’t care. Even if the Bitoran forbade physically comforting one another, she still would have done it.

  When the angel came, she remained in place while Blue threw the cloak over her. The cloth, a heavy, pliable material, smoothed over her face. They sat together in silence while the angel swooped through the room in search of prey.

  Please don’t take them, she prayed. As everyone, she imagined, prayed.

  When the lights shattered the darkness, they all looked around, checked a few rooms. Parsey, the woman who had taken Josh to Len’s body, was gone.

  Less than an hour later, Josh led Blue back to their room. The room sat, small and sparse, in the yellow-tinted gloom. Josh removed her shoes and sat on the bed, once again facing the wall, while Blue stretched out behind her.

  Normally, she simply lay down on her right side, back to Blue, and he snuggled against her. Tonight, however, she swiveled on her behind until she faced the opposite wall and then lowered herself to her left side. Blue’s expressionless face appeared an inch from her own.

  Josh wrapped her arm around his waist, and his slid over her arm.

  “May I kiss you?” she asked politely.

  “Yes.”

  She pressed forward. His lips, tangy and sweet, smashed against hers. Moist and hot, his breath filled her mouth; she breathed his air, filled herself with him.

  Strange how such a . . . Her brain shut down when her stomach clenched, filled with something liquid, hot. Their lips moved against one another’s, and her understanding of the world shrank to a moment-by-moment experience of sensation.

  At first she moved her lips gently, tentatively. Soon, however, she moved closer, pressing her mouth against Blue’s. A fuzzy thought about lip angles entered her brain, but it flitted away before she could process it. Her lips moved on their own, sliding, parting very slightly, nibbling.

  And the longer the
y kissed, the more pressure built inside her. She felt heavy, laden with feeling, overwhelmed with sensation. Their lips still moving together, she pressed herself even closer, hoping that would scratch the itch spreading through her. Small sighs issued from her mouth and into his.

  She wanted closer. She wanted more. She wanted . . . something. Josh slanted her head, drinking him in. Thirsty. She felt thirsty, but not for water.

  A few minutes passed. Finally, Josh broke away with a gasp.

  Pretty soon I’ll have inhaled you all, Sira had said. Josh felt she’d almost breathed in Blue, or maybe eaten him. She pressed her forehead to his and breathed hotly against his mouth. He breathed heavily, too, and his hands caressed her back.

  “That’s some dangerous stuff,” she said weakly.

  Blue remained silent.

  After a moment, Josh asked quietly, tentatively, “Did it . . . was it . . . was that all right? With you, I mean? I mean, was it okay?”

  Blue tilted his face toward her and kissed her briefly on the lips. “It makes everything all right,” he said.

  Their bodies pressed together, their faces almost touching, Josh felt they’d created between them a space, a cocoon, of privacy and intimacy. She could do anything, she thought, make any face or discuss any topic, and no one would know or care.

  She snuggled against him and closed her eyes. Wrapped in warmth and friendship, she hoped she would not dream, either of angels or of the gore and stench that had stolen Sira’s dignity.

  When she awakened the following morning, Josh found herself in her usual position, facing the wall with her back pressed against Blue’s front.

  “Good morning,” Blue said. His voice didn’t even sound sleep-roughened.

  “Morning,” she said, and stretched.

  “I didn’t say this yesterday because I wanted to be sensitive. You were so upset.” He paused for a few seconds. “Joshua, don’t do that again.”

  What? Say good morning? Had she missed something? Had her sleep-fuzzed brain hiccupped? “Huh?” she asked, wiping the grime from her eyes.

  “Don’t go anywhere without me. People want to hurt you. That could have been you.” He tightened his arms around her.

  “I was fine. No one threatened me,” she said, and yawned.

  “They could have.” His breath stirred the hair on the back of her head. “I woke up, and you weren’t here. You screamed . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “I was fine,” she soothed.

  “This time,” he insisted.

  “No one was ever in any danger. Blue, she took her own life,” Josh said gently.

  Blue remained silent for a time. Finally, he said flatly, “Perhaps.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Of course she did. You heard how upset she was.”

  “And how upset she made others. Please, Joshua, just promise me you won’t go anywhere alone.”

  “But I like being alone sometimes,” she said, quite truthfully. Heaven, she’d spent most of her life alone.

  “I’ll stay behind you or just nearby, then. Don’t leave without telling me, though.”

  She sighed in annoyance. “This conversation is no more appealing than it was a few days ago.”

  “Please.”

  Josh grumbled a bit more before finally, and reluctantly, agreeing. She didn’t know what storybook hero he thought himself, that she would be safe around him, but it made him feel better and she liked making him feel useful and happy.

  So she showered with Blue standing outside the bathroom door, as though she were a town leader or something. Her, a jobless Tithe whose life span stretched no farther than 50-some days. They entered the Great Room after that, and Josh felt her face pinched into grumpy, horizontal lines.

  As she washed down her daily aspirin with hot, sweet coffee, a middle-aged, dark brown man, his hair agitated into uneven puffs atop his head, towed an annoyed young woman before Josh.

  “Hi,” Josh said.

  The man’s hands, arms, and fingers gestured in a fluid series of organized movement.

  “His name is Neven,” the girl, pale of skin and hair and maybe a year or two younger than Josh, sighed. “He dragged me here because he knows my mom was deaf, so I learned handspeak. Anyway, he says he’s worried he’s going to be the one taken tonight by the angel. He wants to know if you can tell him if that’s true.”

  Josh sighed. “What’s your name?” she asked the young woman.

  “Keel.”

  “Keel, do either of you need to sit down?”

  “No,” Keel said. “He’s deaf, not missing a leg, you know? And I have a heart condition. I probably could have lived a bunch more years.”

  Dear heaven.

  “Please tell him I’m not an angel,” Josh said. Maybe, she thought in surprise, patience was another lesson she’d learned here. Then, remembering her earlier conversation with Blue, she thought she might have a way yet to go.

  “Oh, I’ve tried,” Keel said, rolling her eyes. Nonetheless, she moved her hands and arms. Neven responded back, his facial expression growing increasingly desperate. “He says whether or not you’re an angel, you’re almost an imrabi and know things we don’t.”

  He spoke once again with his body.

  “Okay, Neven says he has one more question. What happens after we die? Not a loaded question at all, right?” Keel shook her head.

  Josh had no more idea than anyone else in the room. What could she say to this man, with his earnest face and his plea for reassurance?

  “You can tell him the Bitoran says death is like a mirror that reflects the life we’ve lived.” She waited for Keel to translate it. “I always took this to mean if we lived a life that helped others and honored Elovah, we would find the same peace after death.”

  Keel handspoke with Neven, and he nodded as if she’d imparted profound words rather than rehashed topics discussed during countless services.

  Keel thanked her, and they both walked away.

  “You established yourself as a religious leader yesterday,” Blue told her.

  She guessed she had.

  Netta thought so, anyway.

  After noon, when Blue left to get them both some water, Netta approached Josh and sat down with a sigh in Blue’s usual seat on Josh’s right.

  “Whew! Stamina’s not what it used to be. The healers told me it wouldn’t be, but I’d hoped I’d be gone before I started noticing it,” Netta said, smoothing the lines of her skirt and looking straight ahead, much the way Blue always did.

  “Hello, Netta,” Josh said, when she wanted to say something very different.

  “That was a moving tribute you held yesterday,” Netta said, and she sounded utterly sincere.

  “Thank you.” After a pause, Josh asked, “What do you need to say?”

  Netta nodded. “I wanted to ask you politely to please stop trying to convince people you’re an angel.”

  Josh’s face tightened by degrees, until she faced Netta with pursed mouth and rigid eyebrows. “I’m not trying to convince anyone of that. I discourage it every time someone says or does something.”

  Netta nodded once again. “Yes, you do. But somehow, after you do it, the listeners end up believing even more.”

  Josh shook her head. As Blue approached them with glasses of water in hand, she said, “You’re in Blue’s place. Goodbye, Netta.”

  The woman rose with a grunt. She turned and faced Josh. “You’re good at the ceremonies, but if you’re our spiritual leader, we’re in grave trouble.”

  “Joshua leads through compassion, not fear and guilt,” Blue said, handing her a glass of cold water. “She doesn’t need to be an angel. People will always come to her for guidance.”

  Netta shook her head. “People want the easy path,” she tossed over her shoulder as she walked away.

  “That always annoys me,” Josh said, taking a sip of her water.

  “Fear and envy?” Blue asked.

  “Uh, no. When people leave before you can reply. And by the wa
y, how can someone who’d never heard of saying ‘good morning’ pinpoint the underlying dynamics of one woman’s dislike of me?”

  Blue sat next to her and faced the wall. After drinking from his own glass, he replied to the air before him, “I spent so little time with people before this. I learn more every day.”