Scythe

by Neal Shusterman

  “Hey, Rowan.”

  “Hey.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “No.”

  “Why are you just standing there?”

  “Where should I be standing?”

  She rolled her eyes and went into the bathroom, closing the door. Rowan slipped back into the weapons den.

  “Who is it?” asked Tyger. “Is it what’s-her-name? I want to meet your competition. Maybe she’ll give me immunity. Or something else.”

  “No,” Rowan told him. “It’s Scythe Faraday, and he’ll glean you on the spot if he finds you here.”

  Suddenly Tyger’s bravado evaporated. “Oh crap! What are we gonna do?”

  “Calm down. He’s taking a shower. As long as you’re quiet I can get you out.”

  They came out into the hallway. Sure enough, the sound of a shower hissed behind the closed bathroom door.

  “He’s washing off the blood?”

  “Yeah. There was a lot of it.” He led Tyger to the front door, and did everything short of pushing him out.

  • • •

  After being an apprentice for nearly three months, Citra couldn’t deny that she wanted to be chosen by Scythe Faraday to receive the ring. As much as she resisted, as much as she told herself this was not the life for her, she had come to see its importance, and how good a scythe she would be. She had always wanted to live a life of substance and to make a difference. As a scythe, she would. Yes, she would have blood on her hands, but blood can be a cleansing thing.

  It was certainly treated as such in Bokator.

  Citra found Black Widow Bokator to be the most physically demanding thing she had ever done. Their trainer was Scythe Yingxing, who used no weapons but his own hands and feet to glean. He had taken a vow of silence. It seemed every scythe had surrendered something of themselves—not because they had to but because they chose to—as a way to pay for the lives they took.

  “What would you give up?” Rowan once asked Citra. The question made her uncomfortable.

  “If I become a scythe, I’m giving up my life, aren’t I? I think that’s enough.”

  “You’re also giving up a family.” Rowan reminded her.

  She nodded, not wanting to speak to it. The idea of having a family was so far off to her, the idea of not having one felt equally distant. It was hard to have feelings about something she was years away from even considering. Besides, such things had to be kept far from her mind during Bokator. One’s mind had to be clear.

  Citra had never taken any sort of martial art before. She had always been a non-contact sport kind of girl. Track, swimming, tennis—any sport that had a clear lane line or net between her and her opponent. Bokator was the antithesis of that. Hand to hand, body to body combat. Even communication was entirely physical in the class, as their mute instructor would correct their positions as if they were action figures. It was all mind and body, without the brash mediation of words.

  There were eight in their class, and although their instructor was a scythe, Citra and Rowan were the only apprentices. The others were junior scythes, in the first years of their scythehood. There was one other girl, who made no overtures of friendship to Citra. The girls were given no special treatment, and were expected to be every bit the equal of the boys.

  Sparring was punishing in Bokator. Each match began simply enough, with a ritualistic strutting around the circle, the two combatants physically taunting each other in a sort of aggressive dance. Then things got serious, and brutal. All nature of kicks and punches and body slams.

  Today she sparred against Rowan. He had more finesse to his moves, but she had the advantage of speed. He was stronger, but he was also taller, which was not an asset. Citra’s lower center of gravity made her more stable. All taken into account, they were evenly matched.

  She spun and gave Rowan a powerful kick to the chest that almost took him down.

  “Good one,” Rowan said. Scythe Yingxing zipped his own lip to remind them that there was no cross talk during combat.

  She came at him from his left, and he countered so quickly, she had no idea where his hand had come from. It was as if he suddenly had three. She was thrown off-balance, but only for an instant. She felt heat where his hand had connected with her side. There’ll be a bruise. She grinned. He’ll pay for that!

  She feinted left again, then came at him from the right with the full force of her body. She took him down and had him pinned—but it was as if gravity reversed, and suddenly she realized he had turned the tables. Now he was on top, pinning her. She could have flipped him again—she had the leverage—but she didn’t do it. She could feel his heartbeat now as if it were beating in her own chest . . . and she realized she wanted to feel that a little longer. She wanted to feel it more than she wanted to win the match.

  That made her angry. Angry enough to pull away from his grip and put some space between them. There was no lane line, no net, nothing to keep them apart but the wall of her will. But that wall kept losing bricks.

  Scythe Yingxing signaled the end of the match. Citra and Rowan bowed to each other, then took their places on opposite sides of the circle as two others were called up to spar. Citra watched intently, determined not to give Rowan a single glance.

  * * *

  We are not the same beings we once were.

  Consider our inability to grasp literature and most entertainment from the mortal age. To us, the things that stirred mortal human emotions are incomprehensible. Only stories of love pass through our post-mortal filter, yet even then, we are baffled by the intensity of longing and loss that threatens those mortal tales of love.

  We could blame it on our emo-nanites limiting our despair, but it runs far deeper than that. Mortals fantasized that love was eternal and its loss unimaginable. Now we know that neither is true. Love remained mortal, while we became eternal. Only scythes can equalize that, but everyone knows the chance of being gleaned in this, or even the next millennium is so low as to be ignored.

  We are not the same beings we once were.

  So then, if we are no longer human, what are we?

  —From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie

  * * *

  11

  Indiscretions

  Citra and Rowan were not always together at gleanings. Sometimes Scythe Faraday took just one of them. The worst gleaning Citra witnessed took place in early May,  just a week before Vernal Conclave—the first of three conclaves she and Rowan would attend during their apprenticeship.

  Their quarry was a man who had just turned the corner and reset his age to twenty-four. He was at home having dinner with his wife and two kids, who seemed to be around Citra’s age. When Scythe Faraday announced who they had come for, the family wept, and the man slipped off into a bedroom.

  Scythe Faraday had chosen a peaceful bloodletting for the man, but that was not what happened. When Citra and the scythe entered the room, he ambushed them. The man was in peak condition, and in the arrogance of his new rejuvenation, he rejected his gleaning and fought the scythe, breaking his jaw with a vicious punch. Citra came to his aid, trying some Bokator moves she had learned from Scythe Yingxing—and quickly learned that applying a martial art is much different from practice in a dojo. The man swatted her away and advanced on Faraday, who was still reeling from his injury.

  Citra leaped on him again, clinging to him, for the moment giving up on anything beyond eye gouging and hair pulling. It distracted him just long enough for Scythe Faraday to pull out a hunting knife he had concealed in his robe and slit the man’s throat. He began gasping for air, his hands to his neck trying futilely to hold back the flow of blood.

  And Scythe Faraday, holding a hand to his own swelling jaw, spoke to him—not with malice but with great sorrow. “Do you understand the consequences of what you’ve done?”

  The man could not answer. He fell to the ground quivering, gasping. Citra thought death from such a wound would be instantaneous, but apparently not. She had never seen so m
uch blood.

  “Stay here,” the scythe told her. “Look upon him kindly and be the last thing he sees.”

  Then he left the room. Citra knew what he was going to do. The law was very clear as to the consequences of running from or resisting one’s gleaning. She couldn’t close her eyes, because she was instructed not to, but if there was a way, she wished she could have closed her ears, because she knew what she was about to hear from the living room.

  It began with pleas from the woman begging for the lives of her children, and the children sobbing in despair.

  “Do not beg!” Citra heard the scythe say sharply. “Show these children more courage than your husband did.”

  Citra kept her gaze fixed on the dying man’s until his eyes finally emptied of life. Then she went to join Scythe Faraday, steeling herself for what was to come.

  The two children were on the sofa, their sobs having degraded into tearful whimpers. The woman was on her knees whispering to them, comforting them.

  “Are you quite done?” the scythe said impatiently.

  At last the woman rose. Her eyes were tearful, but they no longer seemed pleading. “Do what you have to do,” she said.

  “Good,” said the scythe. “I applaud your fortitude. Now, as it happens, your husband did not resist his gleaning.” Then he touched his swelling face. “However, my apprentice and I had an altercation, resulting in these wounds.”

  The woman just stared at him, her jaw slightly unhinged. So was Citra’s. The scythe turned to Citra and glared at her. “My apprentice shall be severely disciplined for fighting with me.” Then he turned back to the woman. “Please kneel.”

  The woman fell to her knees, not so much a kneel as a collapse.

  Scythe Faraday held out his ring to her. “As is customary, you and your children shall receive immunity from gleaning for one year henceforth. Each of you, please kiss my ring.”

  The woman kissed it again, and again, and again.

  • • •

  The scythe said little after they left. They rode a bus, because whenever possible the scythe avoided the use of a publicar. He saw it as an extravagance.

  When they got off at their stop, Citra dared to speak.

  “Shall I be disciplined for breaking your jaw?” Citra knew it would be healed by morning, but the healing nanites were not spontaneous. He still looked pretty awful.

  “You will speak to no one of this,” he told her sternly. “You will not even comment on it in your journal, is that clear? The man’s indiscretion shall never be known.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  She wanted to tell him how much she admired him for what he had done. Choosing compassion over obligation. There was a lesson to be learned in every gleaning, and today’s was one she would not soon forget. The sanctity of the law . . . and the wisdom to know when it must be broken.

  • • •

  Citra, try as she might to be a stellar apprentice, was not immune to indiscretion herself. One of Citra’s nightly chores was to bring Scythe Faraday a glass of warm milk before bed. “As in my childhood, warm milk smooths the edges of the day,” the scythe had told her. “I have, however, dispensed with the cookie that once came with it.”

  The thought of a scythe having milk and cookies before bed bordered on absurd to Citra. But she supposed even an agent of death would have guilty pleasures.

  Quite often, however, when a gleaning had been difficult, he would fall sleep before she came into his room at the appointed time with the milk. In those cases she would drink it herself, or give it to Rowan, because Scythe Faraday made it clear that nothing in his household was ever wasted.

  On the night of that awful gleaning, she lingered in his room a bit longer.

  “Scythe Faraday,” she said gently. Then said it again. No response. She could tell by his breathing he was out.

  There was an object on the nightstand. In fact, it was there every night.

  His ring.

  It caught the oblique light spilling in from the hallway. Even in the dim room it glittered.

  She downed the glass of milk and set it on the nightstand, so that in the morning the scythe would see she had brought it and that it hadn’t been wasted. Then she knelt there, her eyes fixed on the ring. She wondered why he never slept with it, but felt that asking would be some sort of intrusion.

  When she received hers—if she received hers—would it retain the solemn mystery that it held for her now, or would it become ordinary to her? Would she come to take it for granted?

  She reached forward, then drew her hand back. Then reached forward again and gently took the ring. She turned it in her fingers so that it caught the light. The stone was big; about the size of an acorn. It was said to be a diamond, but there was a darkness in its core that made it different from a simple diamond ring. There was something in the core of that ring, but no one knew what it was. She wondered if even the scythes themselves knew. The center wasn’t exactly black—it was a deep discoloration that looked different depending on the light—the way a person’s eyes sometimes do.

  Then, when she glanced at the scythe, she could see that his eyes were open and watching her.

  She froze, knowing she was caught, knowing that putting the ring down now wouldn’t change that.

  “Would you like to try it on?” Scythe Faraday asked.

  “No,” she said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have touched it .”

  “You shouldn’t have, but you did.”

  She wondered if he had been awake this whole time.

  “Go ahead,” he told her. “Try it on. I insist.”

  She was dubious, but did as she was told, because in spite of what she told him, she did want to try it on.

  It felt warm on her finger. It was sized for the scythe, so it was too large for her. It was also heavier than she imagined.

  “Do you worry that it will ever be stolen?” she asked.

  “Not really. Anyone foolish enough to steal a scythe’s ring is quickly removed from the world, so they cease to be a problem.”

  The ring was getting noticeably cooler.

  “It is a covetable object, though, don’t you agree?” the scythe said.

  Suddenly Citra realized the ring wasn’t just cool, it was freezing. The metal, in a matter of seconds, had grown white with frost, and her finger was in such intense pain from the cold, she cried out and pulled the ring from her hand. It flew across the room.

  Not only was her ring finger severely frostbitten, so were the fingers that had pulled it free. She bit back a whimper. She could now feel warmth flowing through her body as her healing nanites released morphine. She became woozy, but forced herself to stay alert.

  “A security measure I installed myself,” the scythe said. “A micro-coolant chip in the setting. Let me see.” He turned on his nightstand light and grabbed her hand, looking at her ring finger. The flesh at the joint was pale blue and frozen solid. “In the Age of Mortality, you might have lost the finger, but I trust your nanites are already mending the damage.” He let go of her hand. “You’ll be fine by morning. Perhaps next time you’ll think before touching things that don’t belong to you.” He retrieved his ring, set it back on the nightstand, then handed her the empty glass. “From now on Rowan will bring me my evening milk,” he said.

  Citra deflated. “I’m sorry I disappointed you, Your Honor. You’re right; I don’t deserve to bring you your milk.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You misunderstand. This is not a punishment. Curiosity is human; I merely allowed you to get it out of your system. I have to say, it took you long enough.”  Then he gave her a little conspiratorial grin. “Now let’s see how long it takes Rowan to go for the ring.”

  * * *

  Sometimes, when the weight of my job becomes overwhelming, I begin to lament all the things lost when we conquered death. I think about religion and how, once we became our own saviors, our own gods, most faiths became irrelevant. What must it have been like to believe in someth
ing greater than oneself? To accept imperfection and look to a rising vision of all we could never be? It must have been comforting. It must have been frightening. It must have lifted people from the mundane, but also justified all sorts of evil. I often wonder if the bright benefit of belief outweighed the darkness its abuse could bring.

  There are the tone cults, of course, dressing in sackcloth and worshiping sonic vibrations—but like so many things in our world, they seek to imitate what once was. Their rituals are not to be taken seriously. They exist merely to make the passing time feel meaningful and profound.

  Lately I’ve been preoccupied with a tone cult in my neighborhood. I went into their gathering place the other day. I was there to glean one of the cult’s congregants—a man who had not yet turned his first corner. They were intoning what they called “the resonant frequency of the universe.” One of them told me that the sound is alive and that harmonizing with it brings inner peace. I wonder, when they look at the great tuning fork that stands as the symbol of their faith, if they truly believe it to be a symbol of power or are they just joining in a communal joke?

  —From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie

  * * *

  12

  No Room for Mediocrity

  “The Scythedom is the world’s only self-governing body,” said Scythe Faraday. “While the rest of the world is under Thunderhead rule, the Scythedom is not. Which is why we hold conclaves three times a year to resolve disputes, review policy, and mourn the lives we’ve taken.”

  Vernal Conclave, which was to take place during the first week of May, was less than a week away. Rowan and Citra had studied enough of the structure of the Scythedom to know that all twenty-five regions of the world held their conclaves on the same day, and that there were currently three hundred twenty-one scythes in their region, which encompassed the heart of the North Merican continent.