Scythe

by Neal Shusterman

  “But . . . but that’s not allowed!”

  Goddard was unperturbed. “Then let someone complain. Oh, what’s that I hear? Silence!”

  “Don’t worry,” Volta told Rowan. “It’s what you’ve trained for. You’ll do fine.”

  Which is what Rowan was worried about. He didn’t want to do “fine.” He wanted to be miserable at it. He wanted to be a failure, because only by failing would he know that he held on to a shred of his humanity. His brain felt about ready to burst out through his nose and ears. He hoped it would, because then he’d glean nobody today. If I must do this, I will be merciful like Scythe Faraday, he told himself. I will not enjoy it. I will NOT enjoy it!

  They came around a corner and Rowan saw their destination: some sort of compound made to look like an old adobe mission, completely out of place in the cold of MidMerica. The iron symbol atop the tallest steeple was a two-pronged fork. This was a tone cult cloister.

  “Nearly a hundred Tonists reside behind those walls,” Goddard announced. “Our goal is to glean them all.”

  Scythe Rand grinned. Scythe Chomsky checked the settings on his weapon. Only Scythe Volta seemed to have reservations. “All of them?”

  Goddard shrugged as if it were nothing. As if all those lives meant nothing. “Obliteration is our hallmark,” he said. “We don’t always succeed, but we try.”

  “But this . . . this breaks the second commandment. It clearly shows bias.”

  “Come now, Alessandro,” Goddard said in his most patronizing tone. “Bias against whom? Tonists are not a registered cultural group.”

  “Couldn’t they be considered a religion?” Rowan offered.

  “You gotta be kidding,” laughed Scythe Rand. “They’re a joke!”

  “Precisely,” agreed Goddard. “They’ve made a mockery of mortal age faith. Religion is a cherished part of history, and they’ve turned it into a travesty.”

  “Glean them all!” said Chomsky, powering up his weapon.

  Goddard and Rand drew their swords. Volta glanced at Rowan and said quietly, “The best thing about these gleanings is that it’s over quick.” Then he drew his sword as well, and followed the others through a gated archway that the Tonists always left open for lost souls seeking tonal solace. They had no idea what was coming.

  • • •

  Word spread quickly on the street that a small elegy of scythes had entered the Tonist cloister. As human nature would have it, rumor quickly raised the number to a dozen scythes or more, and as human nature would also have it, crowds that were slightly more excited than frightened gathered across the street wondering if they would get a glimpse of the scythes, and perhaps even the carnage they left behind. But all they saw for now was a single young man, an apprentice standing at the open gate, his back to the crowd.

  Rowan was ordered to remain at the gate, sword drawn, to prevent anyone from trying to escape. His plan, of course, was to allow anyone to escape. But when the panicked Tonists saw him, his sword, and his apprentice armband, they ran back into the compound, where they became prey for the scythes. He stood there for five minutes, then finally he left his spot at the gate, losing himself in the maze-like compound. Only then did people begin to slip out to safety.

  The sounds of anguish were almost impossible to endure. Knowing he’d be expected to glean someone before this was through made it impossible for him to disappear into himself this time. The place was a labyrinth of courtyards and walkways and illogical structures. He had no idea where he was. A building was burning to his left, and one walkway was littered with the dead, marking the passage of one of the scythes. A woman huddled, partially hidden by a winter-bare shrub, cradling a baby, trying desperately to keep it quiet. She panicked when she saw Rowan and screamed, holding her baby closer.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he told her. “No one’s guarding the main gate. If you hurry, you’ll make it out. Go now!”

  She didn’t waste any time. She took off. Rowan could only hope she didn’t run into a scythe on the way.

  Then he came around a corner and saw another figure huddled against a column, chest heaving in sobs. But it wasn’t one of the Tonists. It was Scythe Volta. His sword lay on the ground. His yellow robe was splattered with blood, and blood covered his hands, shiny and slick. When he saw Rowan he turned away, his sobs growing heavier. Rowan knelt down to him. He clutched something in his hand. Not a weapon, but something else.

  “It’s over,” Volta said, his voice barely a whisper. “It’s over now.” Clearly, however, from the sounds coming from elsewhere in the compound, it was not over at all.

  “What happened, Alessandro?” Rowan asked.

  Volta looked at him then, the anguish in his eyes like that of a man already damned. “I thought it was . . . I thought it was an office. Or maybe a storeroom. I’d go in, there’d be a couple of people there. I’d glean them as painlessly as I could, and move on. That’s what I thought. But it wasn’t an office. Or a storeroom. It was a classroom.”

  He broke down in sobs again as he spoke. “There had to be at least a dozen little kids in there. Cowering. They were cowering from me, Rowan. But there was this one boy. He stepped forward. His teacher tried to stop him, but he stepped forward. He wasn’t afraid. And he held up one of their stupid tuning forks. He held it up like it would ward me off. ‘You won’t hurt us,’ he said. Then he struck it against a desk to make it ring, and held it up to me. ‘By the power of the tone, you won’t hurt us,’ he said. And he believed it, Rowan. He believed in its power. He believed it would protect him.”

  “What did you do?”

  Volta closed his eyes, and his words came out in a horrible squeal.

  “I gleaned him . . . I gleaned them all. . . .”

  Then he opened his bloody hand, revealing that he held the boy’s little tuning fork. It tumbled to the ground with a tiny atonal clank.

  “What are we, Rowan? What the hell are we? It can’t be what we’re supposed to be.”

  “It’s not. It never was. Goddard isn’t a scythe. He may have the ring, he may have license to glean, but he’s not a scythe. He’s a killer, and he has to be stopped. We can find a way to stop him, both of us!”

  Volta shook his head and looked at the blood pooling in his palms. “It’s over,” he said again. And then took a deep, shuddering breath and became very, very calm. “It’s over, and I’m glad.”

  That’s when Rowan realized that the blood on Volta’s hands was not from his victims. It was from Volta’s own wrists. The gashes were jagged and long. They were made with very clear intent.

  “Alessandro, no! You don’t have to do this! We have to call an ambudrone. It’s not too late.”

  But they both knew that it was.

  “Self-gleaning is every scythe’s last prerogative. You can’t rob that from me, Rowan. Don’t even try.”

  His blood was everywhere now, staining the snow of the courtyard. Rowan wailed—never had he felt so helpless. “I’m sorry, Alessandro. I’m so sorry. . . .”

  “My real name is Shawn Dobson. Will you call me that, Rowan? Will you call me by my real name?”

  Rowan could barely speak through his own tears. “It’s . . . it’s been an honor to know you, Shawn Dobson.”

  He leaned on Rowan, barely able to hold up his head, his voice getting weaker. “Promise me you’ll be a better scythe than I was.”

  “I promise, Shawn.”

  “And then maybe . . . maybe . . .”

  But whatever he was going to say, it leaked away with the last of his life. His head came to rest on Rowan’s shoulder, while all around them distant cries of agony filled the icy air.

  * * *

  Each day I pray as my ancestors did. They once prayed to gods that were fallible and fickle. Then to one God who stood in harsh and terrifying judgment. Then to a loving, forgiving God.  And then finally to a power with no name.

  But to whom can the immortal pray? I have no answer to that, but still I cast my voice out int
o the void, hoping to reach something beyond distance and deeper than the depths of my own soul. I ask for guidance. And for courage. And I beg—oh, how I beg—that I never become so desensitized to the death I must deliver that it feels normal. Commonplace.

  My greatest wish for humanity is not for peace or comfort or joy. It is that we all still die a little inside every time we witness the death of another. For only the pain of empathy will keep us human. There’s no version of God that can help us if we ever lose that.

  —From the gleaning journal of H.S. Faraday

  * * *

  36

  The Thirteenth Kill

  Goddard was in the chapel sanctuary finishing the last of his terrible business. Outside the wails began to fade as Rand and Chomsky finished what they had begun. A building was burning across the courtyard. Smoke and cold air poured in through the broken stained glass windows of the chapel. Goddard stood at the front, by an altar that featured a shining two-pronged fork and a stone bowl of dirty water.

  There was only one Tonist left alive in the chapel. He was a balding man, wearing a frock that was slightly different from the dead around him. Goddard held him with one hand and wielded his sword in the other. Then Goddard turned to see Rowan and smiled.

  “Ah, Rowan! Just in time,” he said cheerily. “I’ve saved the curate for you.”

  The Tonist curate showed defiance rather than fear. “What you’ve done here today will only help our cause,” he said. “Martyrs testify far more effectively than the living.”

  “Martyrs to what?” Goddard sneered and tapped his blade against the huge tuning fork. “To this thing? I’d laugh if I wasn’t so disgusted.”

  Rowan strode closer, ignoring the carnage around him, focusing in on Goddard. “Let him go,” Rowan said.

  “Why? Do you prefer a moving target?”

  “I prefer no target.”

  Finally Goddard understood. He grinned, as if Rowan had just said something charming and quaint. “Does our young man express a wee bit of disapproval?”

  “Volta’s dead,” Rowan told him.

  Goddard’s gleeful expression faded, but only a bit. “He was attacked by the Tonists? They’ll pay dearly for it!”

  “It wasn’t them.” Rowan didn’t even try to hide the animosity in his voice. “He gleaned himself.”

  This gave Goddard pause. The curate struggled in his grip, and Goddard slammed him against the stone basin hard enough to knock him out, then let the man fall to the ground.

  “Volta was the weakest of us,” Goddard said. “I’m not entirely surprised. Once you’re ordained, I will happily have you take his place.”

  “I won’t do that.”

  Goddard took a moment to gauge Rowan. To read him. It felt like a violation. Goddard was in his head—even deeper; in his soul—and Rowan didn’t know how to cast him out.

  “I know you and Alessandro were close, but he was nothing like you, Rowan, believe me. He never had the hunger. But you do. I’ve seen it in your eyes. I’ve seen how you are when you train. Living in the moment. Every kill perfect.”

  Rowan found he couldn’t look away from Goddard, who had put down his sword and now held his hands out as if his were the inviting embrace of a savior. The diamonds in his robe twinkled in the faraway firelight, so bedazzling.

  “We could have been called reapers,” Goddard said, “but our founders saw fit to call us scythes—because we are the weapons in mankind’s immortal hand. You are a fine weapon, Rowan, sharp, and precise. And when you strike, you are glorious to behold.”

  “Stop it! That’s not true!”

  “You know it is. You were born for this, Rowan. Don’t throw it away.”

  The curate began to groan, beginning to regain consciousness. Goddard hauled him to his feet. “Glean him, Rowan. Don’t fight it. Glean him now. And enjoy it.”

  Rowan tightened the grip on his blade as he looked into the curate’s bleary, half-conscious eyes. Even as he tried to stand his ground, Rowan couldn’t deny the power of the undertow. “You’re a monster!” he shouted. “The worst kind, because you don’t just kill, you turn others into killers like yourself.”

  “You just lack perspective. The predator is always a monster to the prey. To the gazelle the lion is a demon. To a mouse, the eagle is evil incarnate.” He took a step closer, the curate still held tightly in his grip.

  “Will you be the eagle or the mouse, Rowan? Will you soar or will you scurry away? For those are the only two choices today.”

  Rowan’s head was swimming. The smell of blood and the smoke pouring in through the shattered windows made him dizzy and muddled his thoughts. The curate looked no different than the strangers he practiced on every day—and for a moment, he felt himself out on the lawn in the middle of a killcraft exercise. Rowan unsheathed his sword and stalked forward, feeling the hunger, living in the moment, just as Goddard had said, and allowing himself to feel that hunger was freeing in a way Rowan couldn’t describe. For many months he had trained for this, and now he finally understood why Goddard always let the last one go before Rowan could strike, stopping him one blow short of completion.

  It was to prepare him for today.

  Today he would finally have that completion, and every day henceforth, when he went out to glean, he would not stay his hand or his blade or his bullet until there was no one left to glean.

  Before he could think it through, before his mind could tell him to stop, he launched himself toward the curate, and thrust his blade forward with all of his force, finally achieving that exquisite completion.

  The man gasped and stumbled aside, the blade having missed him completely.

  Instead, Rowan’s blade hit its true mark, and ran Scythe Goddard through, all the way to the hilt.

  Rowan was close to Goddard now. Inches from his face, looking into his wide, shocked eyes.

  “I am what you made me,” he told Goddard. “And you’re right: I enjoyed that. I enjoyed that more than anything I’ve ever done in my life.”  Then with his free hand, Rowan reached down and yanked the ring off Goddard’s finger. “You don’t deserve to wear this. You never did.”

  Goddard opened his mouth to speak—perhaps to deliver an eloquent death soliloquy—but Rowan didn’t want to hear anything from him anymore, so he stepped back, withdrew his sword from Goddard’s gut, and swung it in a broad, sweeping arc that took off Goddard’s head in a single blow. It tumbled and landed in the basin of dirty water, as if that were what the basin was there for.

  The rest of Goddard’s body fell limply to the ground, and in the silence of the moment, Rowan heard from behind him:

  “What the hell did you do?”

  Rowan turned and saw Chomsky standing at the entrance of the chapel, with Rand beside him.

  “You are so gleaned when he’s revived!”

  Rowan let his training take over. I am the weapon, he told himself. And in that moment he was a lethal one. Chomsky and Rand defended themselves against him, and although they were good, they were nothing compared to a weapon so sharp and precise as he. Rowan’s blade cut Rand deep, but she kicked the sword out of his hand with a well-placed Bokator kick. Rowan responded with an even more effective kick that broke her spine. Chomsky set Rowan’s arm ablaze with the flamethrower, but Rowan rolled on the ground, putting it out, then grabbed the toning mallet from beside the altar and brought it down on Chomsky like the hammer of Thor, striking again and again and again as if he were toning the hour, until the curate grabbed his hand to stop him and said, “That’s enough, son. He’s dead.”

  Rowan dropped the mallet. Only now did he allow himself to let down his guard.

  “Come with me, son,” the man said. “There’s a place for you with us. We can hide you from the Scythedom.”

  Rowan looked at the man’s outstretched hand, but even now Goddard’s words came back to him. The eagle or the mouse? No, Rowan would not scurry away and hide. There was still more that had to be done.

  “Leave here,” h
e told the man. “Find the survivors, if there are any, and get out—but do it quickly.”

  The man looked at him for a moment more, then turned and left the chapel. Once he was gone, Rowan picked up the flamethrower and got down to business.

  • • •

  Out in the street, fire trucks had already pulled up and peace officers were holding back crowds. The entire cloister was now on fire, and although firefighters raced toward the blaze, they were intercepted by a young man stepping out of the main gate.

  “This is a scythe action. You will not intervene,” he said.

  The fire captain who now approached him had heard of scythe-related fires, but never had such a thing happened on his watch. There was something about this that didn’t seem right. Yes, the boy appeared to be wearing a scythe’s robe—a royal blue one, studded with diamonds—but the robe clearly didn’t fit him. With flames consuming the compound at an alarming rate, the captain made a judgment call. This kid, whoever he was, was no scythe, and was not about to hinder their efforts.

  “Out of the way!” he told the kid dismissively “Get back with the others and let us do our job.”

  Then the kid moved with lightning speed. The captain felt his legs kicked out from under him. He landed on his back, and suddenly the kid was on top of him, a knee painfully pressed into the captain’s chest and a hand around his throat squeezing so tightly it almost closed off his windpipe. Suddenly the boy didn’t seem a boy at all. He seemed a whole lot bigger. A whole lot older.

  “I SAID THIS IS A SCYTHE ACTION AND YOU WILL NOT INTERVENE, OR I WILL GLEAN YOU RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW!”

  The fire captain now knew he had made a grievous mistake. No one but a scythe could be so commanding and take such absolute control of a situation. “Yes, Your Honor,” the captain rasped. “I’m sorry, Your Honor.”

  The scythe stood, letting the captain get up. He told his squad to fall back, and the squad, having seen the scythe take their captain down so effectively, didn’t question it.

  “You can protect other buildings that are threatened,” the young scythe said, “but you’ll let this entire compound burn to the ground.”