Scythe

by Neal Shusterman

  Her aim was perfect. He wailed and went down, and Citra raced across the sand, leaped the hedge, and grabbed him by the shirt with both hands as he writhed.

  “You’re going to pay for what you’ve done,” she snarled.

  Then she saw the man’s face. Familiar. Too familiar. Her first instinct was to think this was another layer of treachery. It wasn’t until he spoke that she had to accept the truth.

  “Citra?”

  Scythe Faraday’s face was a mask of pain and disbelief. “Citra, oh god, what are you doing here?”

  She let him go out of shock, and Scythe Faraday’s head hit the concrete hard, knocking him out and making the horror of the moment all the worse.

  She wanted to call for help, but who would help her after what she’d done?

  She lifted his head again, cradling it gently as the blood from his shattered knee flowed between the patio stones, turning the sand in the cracks to red mortar, drying to brown.

  * * *

  Immortality cannot temper the folly or frailty of youth. Innocence is doomed to die a senseless death at our own hands, a casualty of the mistakes we can never undo. So we lay to rest the wide-eyed wonder we once thrived upon, replacing it with scars of which we never speak, too knotted for any amount of technology to repair.  With each gleaning I commit, with each life taken for the good of humanity, I mourn for the boy I once was, whose name I sometimes struggle to remember.  And I long for a place beyond immortality where I can, in some small measure, resurrect the wonder, and be that boy again.

  —From the gleaning journal of H.S. Faraday

  * * *

  33

  Both the Messenger and the Message

  Citra carried him inside. She set him on a sofa, and made a tourniquet to staunch the blood. He groaned, beginning to rouse, and when he broke the tenuous surface of consciousness, his first thought was of her.

  “You should not be here,” he said, his words weak and slurred—an effect of his pain nanites flooding his system. Still, he grimaced in bleary agony.

  “We have to get you to a hospital,” she told him. “This is too much for your nanites to handle.”

  “Nonsense. They’ve already taken the edge off the pain. As for healing, they’ll do the job without intervention.”

  “But—”

  “I have no other option,” he told her. “Going to a hospital will alert the Scythedom that I’m still alive.” He shifted position, grimacing only slightly. “Between nature and nanites, my knee will heal. It will just take time, of which I have no shortage.”

  She elevated his leg, bandaged it, then sat on the floor beside him.

  “Were you so resentful of my leaving that you had to exact your revenge in flesh?” he asked, only half joking. “Are you so offended that I managed a method of secretly retiring, instead of actually gleaning myself?”

  “I thought you were someone else,” she told him. “Someone named Gerald Van Der Gans. . . .”

  “My birth name,” he told her. “A name I surrendered when I became Honorable Scythe Michael Faraday. But none of this explains your presence here. I freed you, Citra—you and Rowan both. By faking my own gleaning, you were both freed from your apprenticeship. You should be back in your old life, forgetting that I had plucked you from it. So why are you here?”

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  He pulled himself up slightly so he could see her more directly. “Don’t know what?”

  And so she told him everything. How, instead of being freed, she and Rowan had ended up with Scythes Curie and Goddard. How Xenocrates had tried to pin Faraday’s murder on her, and how Scythe Curie had helped her get to him. As she spoke, he put his hands to his eyes as if he might gouge them out.

  “To think I was complacent here, while all this was going on.”

  “How could you not know?” she asked, for in her mind he always seemed to know everything, even the things he could not possibly know.

  Scythe Faraday sighed. “Marie—Scythe Curie, that is—is the only member of the Scythedom who knows I’m still alive. I am completely off-grid now. The only way to reach me would be in person. So she sent you. You are both the messenger and the message.”

  The moment became uncomfortable. Thunder rumbled in from the sea, much closer now. The flashes of lightning brighter. “Is it true you died seven deaths for her?” Citra asked.

  He nodded. “And her for me. She told you that, did she? Well, it was a very long time ago.”

  Outside the rain finally began to fall, surging in fits and starts. “I love the way it rains here,” he told her. “It reminds me that some forces of nature can never be entirely subdued. They are eternal, which is a far better thing to be than immortal.”

  And so they sat listening to the soothing randomness of the rain until Citra began to grow too weary to even think.

  “So what happens now?” she asked.

  “Very simple, actually. I heal, and you rest. Anything beyond that is a conversation for a future date.” Then he pointed. “The bedroom’s in there. I expect a full night’s sleep from you, followed by a recitation of your poisons in the morning, in order of toxicity.”

  “My poisons?”

  In spite of his pain and drug-induced haze, Scythe Faraday smiled. “Yes, your poisons. Are you my apprentice or not?”

  Citra couldn’t help but smile right back at him. “Yes, Your Honor, I am.”

  * * *

  The longer we live, the quicker the days seem to pass. How troublesome that is when we live forever. A year seems to pass in a matter of weeks. Decades fly with no milestones to mark them. We become settled in the inconsequential drudgery of our lives, until suddenly we look at ourselves in the mirror and see a face we barely recognize begging us to turn a corner and be young again.

  But are we truly young when we turn the corner?

  We hold the same memories, the same habits, the same unrealized dreams. Our bodies may be spry and limber, but toward what end? No end. Never an end.

  I do believe mortals strived more heartily toward their goals, because they knew that time was of the essence. But us? We can put things off far more effectively than those doomed to die, because death has become the exception instead of the rule.

  The stagnation that I so fervently glean on a daily basis seems an epidemic that only grows. There are times I feel I am fighting a losing battle against an old-fashioned apocalypse of the living dead.

  —From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie

  * * *

  34

  The Second Most Painful Thing You’ll Ever Have to Do

  Winter sped relentlessly closer. At first Rowan kept a tally of the lives he temporarily ended, but as the days passed, he found he couldn’t keep up. A dozen a day, week to week, month to month. They all blended together. For the eight months he trained under Scythe Goddard, he had made over two thousand kills, mostly the same people over and over again. Did those people despise him, he wondered, or did they truly see this as just a job? There were times when the training called for them to run, or even fight back. Most were inept at it, but some had clearly been trained in combat. There were even sessions where his targets had their own weapons. He had been cut and stabbed and shot—but never so severely that he had to be revived. He had grown into an exceptionally skilled killer.

  “You have excelled beyond my wildest expectations,” Goddard told him. “I suspected you had a spark in you, but never dreamed it would be such an inferno!”

  And yes, he had come to enjoy it, just as Scythe Goddard said he would. And just like Scythe Volta, he despised himself for it.

  “I’m looking forward to your ordainment,” Volta told him one day during their afternoon studies together. “Maybe you and I can split off from Goddard. Glean at our own speed, in our own way.” But Rowan knew Volta would never find the momentum to escape Goddard’s gravity.

  “You’re assuming that I’ll be chosen over Citra,” Rowan pointed out.

  “Cit
ra’s gone,” Volta reminded him. “She’s been off-grid for months. If she shows her face at conclave, the bejeweling committee won’t look too kindly on her for being AWOL all this time. All you have to do is pass the final test, and without question you’ll win.”

  Which is what Rowan was afraid of.

  The news of Citra’s disappearance had trickled down to Rowan unofficially. He didn’t know the whole story. She had been accused of something by Xenocrates. There was an emergency meeting of the disciplinary committee, and Scythe Curie showed up on her behalf, clearing her of any wrongdoing. The accusation must have been orchestrated by Goddard, because he was furious at the committee’s decision to drop the charges—and by the fact that Citra had completely vanished. Not even Scythe Curie seemed to know where she was.

  The day after that, Goddard took his junior scythes and Rowan on a gleaning rampage, fueled by his fury. He released his rage at a crowded harvest festival—and this time Rowan couldn’t save anyone, because Goddard kept him by his side as his weapons caddy. Scythe Chomsky used his flamethrower to set a corn maze ablaze, smoking people out to be picked off one by one by the other scythes.

  Scythe Volta was now in the doghouse, though, because he had lobbed a container of poison gas into the burning maze. Highly effective, but it stole kills from Goddard and the others.

  “I did it to be humane,” Volta confided in Rowan. “Better they die by gas than by fire.” Then he added, “or by getting blown away just as they thought they were escaping the maze.”

  Perhaps Rowan was wrong about Volta. Maybe he would escape from Goddard—but he certainly wouldn’t do it without Rowan. It was one more argument for Rowan to earn the ring.

  They had all reached their gleaning quota by the end of that awful evening, and Goddard still didn’t seem to have satisfied his bloodlust. He raged against the system, if only to his own disciples, calling for a day when scythes would have no limits on gleaning.

  • • •

  Citra returned to Scythe Curie at Falling Water many weeks before Winter Conclave, when the Month of Lights had just begun, and gifts were being passed between friends and loved ones to celebrate ancient miracles that no one quite remembered.

  Unlike her frantic journey to Amazonia’s northern shore, Citra flew home in comfort, and with peace of mind. She didn’t have to look over her shoulder every five minutes because no one was chasing her anymore. As Scythe Curie had promised, Citra had been cleared of any wrongdoing. And while Scythe Mandela sent a heartfelt note of apology for Scythe Curie to give to Citra, High Blade Xenocrates made no such gesture.

  “He will pretend like it never happened,” Scythe Curie told her as the two of them drove home from the airport. “That’s the closest the man will ever come to an apology.”

  “But it did happen,” Citra said. “I had to hurl myself from a building to escape from it.”

  “And I had to blow up two perfectly good cars,” Scythe Curie said wryly.

  “I won’t forget what he did.”

  “And you shouldn’t. You have every right to judge Xenocrates harshly—but not too harshly. I suspect there are more variables in play than we know.”

  “That’s what Scythe Faraday said.”

  Scythe Curie smiled at the mention of his name. “And how is our good friend Gerald?” she asked with a wink.

  “Reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated,” said Citra. “Mostly, he gardens and takes long walks on the beach.”

  The fact that he was still alive was a secret they both planned to keep. Even Scythe Mandela believed that Citra was staying with a relative of Scythe Curie in Amazonia, and he had no reason to suspect it wasn’t true.

  “Perhaps I’ll join him on his beach in a hundred years or so,” said Scythe Curie. “But for now there’s too much to do in the Scythedom. Too many crucial battles to fight.” Citra could see her gripping the steering wheel tighter as she thought of it. “The future of everything we believe as scythes is at stake, Citra. There is even talk of abolishing the quota. Which is why you must win the ring. I know the scythe you’ll be, and it’s exactly what we need.”

  Citra looked away. Without daily gleaning, her training with Scythe Faraday over the past few months had been about honing her mind and body—but more importantly, contemplating the moral and ethical high ground that a traditional scythe must always take. There was nothing “old guard” about it. It was simply right. She knew such high ideals were absent from Rowan’s training, but it didn’t mean he didn’t hold onto them in his heart, despite his bloodthirsty mentor.

  “Rowan could be a good scythe as well,” Citra offered.

  Scythe Curie sighed. “He can’t be trusted anymore. Look what he did to you at Harvest Conclave. You can make all the excuses in the world for him, but the fact is, he’s an unknown quantity now. Training under Goddard is bound to twist him in ways that no one can predict.”

  “Even if that’s true,” said Citra, finally getting to the point they both knew she’d been dancing around, “I don’t know how I could glean him.”

  “It will be the second most painful thing you’ll ever do,” admitted Scythe Curie. “But you’ll find a way to accomplish it, Citra. I have faith in you.”

  If gleaning Rowan would be the second most painful thing she’d ever do, Citra wondered what the most painful thing would be. But she was afraid to ask, because she really didn’t want to know.

  * * *

  So many of our archaic traditions and rules need to be challenged. The founders, as well-meaning as they were, still suffered from a mortal mentality, having been so close to the Age of Mortality. They could not foresee the needs of the Scythedom.

  I would first take on the concept of a quota. It’s absurd that we are free to determine our method and criteria for gleaning, but not the number of gleanings we accomplish. We are hamstrung every minute of every day, because we must always consider whether we are gleaning too much or too little. Better to allow us to glean at our own complete discretion. That way, scythes who glean too little will not be punished, because scythes who have a healthier gleaning appetite will make up for their shortcomings. In this way, we can help one another, and isn’t helping our fellow scythes a good thing for all of us?

  —From the gleaning journal of H.S. Goddard

  * * *

  35

  Obliteration Is Our Hallmark

  On the last day of the year, just three days before Winter Conclave, Scythe Goddard led one more gleaning expedition.

  “But we’ve already reached our quota for the year,” Scythe Volta was quick to remind him.

  “I will NOT be constrained by a technicality!” Goddard shouted. Rowan thought Goddard might actually hit Volta, but then he took a moment to calm himself, and said, “By the time we begin our gleaning run, it will already be the Year of the Capybara in PanAsia. As far as I’m concerned, that gives us permission to count our kills as part of the new year. Then we shall return in time for our New Year’s Eve gala!”

  Scythe Goddard decided it was a day for samurai swords, although Chomsky refused to part with his flamethrower. “It’s what I’m known for. Why mess with my image?”

  Rowan had been on four gleaning expeditions with Goddard so far. He found he could escape to a place within himself where he was less of an accomplice—even less than an observer. He became the lettuce again. Nonsentient and secondary. Easily ignored and forgotten. It was the only way to keep his sanity in the midst of Goddard’s blood sport. Sometimes he was so forgotten in the midst of the melee that he could help people escape. Other times, he had to be at Goddard’s side, loading or switching out his weapons. He didn’t know what his role would be this time. If Goddard was just using his samurai blade, he didn’t need Rowan to be his weapons caddy. Still, he told Rowan to bring a spare sword.

  Preparations for the party were already in full swing as they got ready to leave for the gleaning run that morning. The catering truck had arrived, and tables were being set up all over
the grounds. The New Year’s Eve gala was one of Goddard’s few preplanned parties, and the guest list was stellar.

  The helicopter landed on the front lawn, blowing away a tent that was being erected for the party as if it were nothing more than a napkin tumbled by the wind.

  “Today we shall provided a much-needed public service,” Goddard told them, with far too much glee. “Today we dispense with some rabble.” But he didn’t explain what he meant. Even so, as the helicopter took off, Rowan had a sinking feeling deep in the pit of his stomach that had nothing to do with their ascent.

  • • •

  They landed in a public park, in the center of a vacant soccer field lightly dusted with snow. There was a playground at the edge of the park where some toddlers, unfazed by the weather, climbed and swung and dug in the sand, bundled up against the cold. The instant their parents saw scythes stepping out of the helicopter, they gathered their children and hurried away, ignoring their children’s wails of protest.

  “Our destination is several blocks away,” Scythe Goddard told them. “I didn’t want to set down too close and ruin the element of surprise.” Then he put a paternal arm around Rowan’s shoulder. “Today is Rowan’s inauguration,” he said. “You will perform your first gleaning today!”

  Rowan recoiled. “What? Me? I can’t! I’m just an apprentice!”

  “Proxy, my boy! Just as I allowed you to grant immunity with my ring, so will you glean someone today, and it will be tallied as mine. Consider it a gift. You don’t have to thank me.”