The invitation came to Citra in early January. It arrived by post—which was the first indication that it was out of the ordinary. There were only three types of communications that arrived by post: packages, official business, or letters from the eccentric—the only type of people who still wrote letters. This appeared to be of the third variety.
“Well, open it,” Ben said, more excited by the envelope than Citra was. It had been handwritten, making it even odder. True, handwriting was still offered as an elective, but, aside from herself, she knew few people who had taken it. She tore the envelope open and pulled out a card that was the same eggshell color as the envelope, then read to herself before reading it aloud.
The pleasure of your company is requested at the Grand Civic Opera, January ninth, seven p.m.
There was no signature, no return address. There was, however, a single ticket in the envelope.
“The opera?” said Ben. “Ew.”
Citra couldn’t agree more.
“Could it be some sort of school event?” their mother asked.
Citra shook her head. “If it was, it would say so.”
She took the invitation and envelope from Citra to study them herself. “Well, whatever it is, it sounds interesting.”
“It’s probably some loser’s way of asking me on a date because he’s too afraid to ask me to my face.”
“Do you think you’ll go?” her mother asked.
“Mom . . . a boy who invites me to the opera is either joking or delusional.”
“Or he’s trying to impress you.”
Citra grunted and left the room, annoyed by her own curiosity. “I’m not going!” she called out from her room, knowing full well that she would.
• • •
The Grand Civic Opera was one of several places where anyone who was anyone went to be seen. At any given performance, only half the patrons were there for the actual opera. The rest were there to participate in the great melodrama of social climbing and career advancement. Even Citra, who moved in none of those circles, knew the drill.
She wore the dress she had bought for the previous year’s homecoming dance, when she was sure that Hunter Morrison would invite her. Instead, Hunter had invited Zachary Swain, which apparently everyone but Citra knew would happen. They were still a couple, and Citra, until today, hadn’t had any use for the dress.
When she put it on, she was far more pleased with it than she thought she’d be. Teenage girls change in a year, but now the dress—which was more about wishful thinking last year—actually fit her perfectly.
In her mind, she had narrowed down the possibilities of her secret admirer. It could be one of five, only two of whom she would enjoy spending an evening alone with. The other three she would endure for the sake of novelty. There was, after all, some fun to be had spending an evening pretending to be pretentious.
Her father insisted on dropping her off. “Call when you’re ready to be picked up.”
“I’ll take a publicar home.”
“Call anyway,” he said. He told her she looked beautiful for the tenth time, then she got out and he drove off to make room for the limousines and Bentleys in the drop-off queue. She took a deep breath and went up the marble steps, feeling as awkward and out of place as Cinderella at the ball.
Upon entering, she was not directed toward either the orchestra or the central staircase leading to the balcony. Instead, the usher looked at the ticket, looked at her, then looked at the ticket again before calling over a second usher to personally escort her.
“What’s all this about?” she asked. Her first thought was that it was a forged ticket and she was being escorted to the exit. Perhaps it had been a joke after all, and she was already running a list of suspects through her mind.
But then the second usher said, “A personal escort is customary for a box seat, miss.”
Box seats, Citra recalled, were the ultimate in exclusivity. They were usually reserved for people too elite to sit among the masses. Normal people couldn’t afford them, and even if they could, they weren’t allowed access. As she followed the usher up the narrow stairs to the left boxes, Citra began to get scared. She knew no one with that kind of money. What if this invitation came to her by mistake? Or if there actually was some sort of big, important person waiting for Citra, what on earth were his or her intentions?
“Here we are!” The usher pulled back the curtain of the box to reveal a boy her age already sitting there. He had dark hair and light freckled skin. He stood up when he saw her, and Citra could see that his suit revealed a little too much of his socks.
“Hi.”
“Hello.”
And the usher left them alone.
“I left you the seat closer to the stage,” he said.
“Thanks.” She sat down, trying to figure out who this was and why he had invited her here. He didn’t appear familiar. Should she know him? She didn’t want to let on that she didn’t recognize him.
Then out of nowhere, he said, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
He held up an invitation that looked exactly like hers. “I’m not much into opera, but hey, it’s better than doing nothing at home. So . . . should I, like, know you?”
Citra laughed out loud. She didn’t have a mysterious admirer; it appeared they both had a mysterious matchmaker, which set Citra working on another mental list—at the top of which were her own parents. Perhaps this was the son of one of their friends—but this kind of subterfuge was pretty obtuse, even for them.
“What’s so funny?” the boy asked, and she showed him her identical invitation. It didn’t make him laugh. Instead he seemed a bit troubled, but didn’t share why.
He introduced himself as Rowan, and they shook hands just as the lights dimmed, the curtain went up, and the music exploded too lush and loud for them to be able to hold a conversation. The opera was Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, The Force of Destiny, but it clearly wasn’t destiny that had hurled these two together; it was a very deliberate hand.
The music was rich and pretty, until it became too much for Citra’s ears. And the story, while easy to follow even without a knowledge of Italian, had little resonance for either of them. It was, after all, a work from the Age of Mortality. War, vengeance, murder—all the themes on which the tale was strung—were so removed from modern reality, few could relate. Catharsis could only gather around the theme of love, which, considering that they were strangers trapped in an opera box, was far more uncomfortable than cathartic.
“So, who do you think invited us?” Citra asked as soon as the lights came up for the first act intermission. Rowan had no more clue than she did, so they shared whatever they could that might help them generate a theory. Aside from them both being sixteen, they had very little in common. She was from the city, he the suburbs. She had a small family, his was large, and their parents’ professions couldn’t have been further apart.
“What’s your genetic index?” he asked—a rather personal question, but perhaps it could have some relevance.
“22-37-12-14-15.”
He smiled. “Thirty-seven percent Afric descent. Good for you! That’s pretty high!”
“Thanks.”
He told her that his was 33-13-12-22-20. She thought to ask him if he knew the subindex of his “other” component, because 20 percent was pretty high, but if he didn’t know, the question would embarrass him.
“We both have 12 percent PanAsian ancestry,” he pointed out. “Could that have something to do with it?” But he was grasping at straws—it was merely coincidence.
Then, toward the end of intermission, the answer stepped into the box behind them.
“Good to see you’re getting acquainted.”
Although it had been a few months since their encounter, Citra recognized him immediately. Honorable Scythe Faraday was not a figure you soon forgot.
“You?” Rowan said with such severity, it was clear that he had a history with the scythe as well.
“I would have arrived sooner, but I had . . . other business.” He didn’t elaborate, for which Citra was glad. Still, his presence here could not be a good thing.
“You invited us here to glean us.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement of fact, because Citra was convinced it was true—until Rowan said, “I don’t think that’s what this is about.”
Scythe Faraday did not make any move to end their lives. Instead, he grabbed an empty chair and sat beside them. “I was given this box by the theater director. People always think making offerings to scythes will prevent them from being gleaned. I had no intention of gleaning her, but now she thinks her gift played a part.”
“People believe what they want to believe,” Rowan said, with a sort of authority that told Citra he knew the truth of it.
Faraday gestured toward the stage. “Tonight we witness the spectacle of human folly and tragedy,” he said. “Tomorrow, we shall live it.”
The curtain went up on the second act before he could explain his meaning.
• • •
For two months, Rowan had been the school pariah—an outcast of the highest order. Although that sort of thing usually ran its course and diminished over time, it was not the case when it came to the gleaning of Kohl Whitlock. Every football game rubbed a healthy dose of salt in the communal wound—and since all of those games were lost, it doubled the pain. Rowan was never particularly popular, nor was he ever the target of derision before, but now he was cornered and beaten on a regular basis. He was shunned, and even his friends actively avoided him. Tyger was no exception.
“Guilt by association, man,” Tyger had said. “I feel your pain, but I don’t want to live it.”
“It’s an unfortunate situation,” the principal told Rowan when he turned up in the nurse’s office, waiting out during lunch for some newly inflicted bruises to heal. “You may want to consider switching schools.”
Then one day, Rowan gave in to the pressure. He stood on a table in the cafeteria and told everyone the lies they wanted to hear.
“That scythe was my uncle,” he proclaimed. “I told him to glean Kohl Whitlock.”
Of course they believed every word of it. Kids began to boo and throw food at him, until he said:
“I want you all to know that my uncle’s coming back—and he asked me to choose who gets gleaned next.”
Suddenly the food stopped flying, the glares ceased, and the beatings miraculously stopped. What filled the void was . . . well . . . a void. Not a single eye would meet his anymore. Not even his teachers would look at him—a few actually started giving him As when he was doing B and C work. He began to feel like a ghost in his own life, existing in a forced blind spot of the world.
At home things were normal. His stepfather stayed entirely out of his business, and his mother was preoccupied with too many other things to give much attention to his troubles. They knew what had happened at school, and what was happening now, but they dismissed it in that self-serving way parents often had of pretending anything they can’t solve is not really a problem.
“I want to transfer to a different high school,” he told his mother, finally taking his principal’s advice, and her response was achingly neutral.
“If you think that’s best.”
He was half convinced if he told her he was dropping out of society and joining a tone cult, she’d say, If you think that’s best.
So when the opera invitation arrived, he hadn’t cared who sent it. Whatever it meant, it was salvation—at least for an evening.
The girl he met in the box seat was nice enough. Pretty, confident—the kind of girl who probably already had a boyfriend, although she never mentioned one. Then the scythe showed up and Rowan’s world shifted back into a dark place. This was the man responsible for his misery. If he could have gotten away with it, Rowan would have pushed him over the railing—but attacks against scythes were not tolerated. The punishment was the gleaning of the offender’s entire family. It was a consequence that ensured the safety of the revered bringers of death.
At the close of the opera, Scythe Faraday gave them a card and very clear instructions.
“You will meet me at this address tomorrow morning, precisely at nine.”
“What should we tell our parents about tonight?” Citra asked. Apparently she had parents who might care.
“Tell them whatever you like. It doesn’t matter, as long as you’re there tomorrow morning.”
• • •
The address turned out to be the Museum of World Art, the finest museum in the city. It didn’t open until ten, but the moment the security guard saw a scythe coming up the steps of the main entrance, he unlocked the doors and let the three of them in without even having to be asked.
“More perks of the position,” Scythe Faraday told them.
They strolled through galleries of the old masters in silence, punctuated only by the sound of their footfalls and the scythe’s occasional commentaries. “See how El Greco uses contrast to evoke emotional yearning.” “Look at the fluidity of motion in this Raphael—how it brings intensity to the visual story he tells.” “Ah! Seurat! Prophetic pointillism a century before the pixel!”
Rowan was the first to ask the necessary question.
“What does any of this have to do with us?”
Scythe Faraday sighed in mild irritation, although he probably anticipated the question. “I am supplying you with lessons you won’t receive in school.”
“So,” said Citra, “you pulled us out of our lives for some random art lesson? Isn’t that a waste of your valuable time?”
The scythe laughed, and Rowan found himself wishing he had been the one to make him laugh.
“What have you learned so far?” Scythe Faraday asked.
Neither had a response, so he asked a different question.
“What do you think our conversation would have been like had I brought you to the post-mortality galleries instead of these older ones?”
Rowan ventured an answer. “Probably about how much easier on the eye post-mortal art is. “Easier and . . . untroubled.”
“How about uninspired?” prompted the scythe.
“That’s a matter of opinion,” said Citra.
“Perhaps. But now that you know what you’re looking for in this art of the dying, I want you to try to feel it.” And he led them to the next gallery.
Although Rowan was sure he’d feel nothing, he was wrong.
The next room was a large gallery with paintings hanging floor to ceiling. He didn’t recognize the artists, but that didn’t matter. There was a coherence to the work, as if it had been painted by the same soul, if not the same hand. Some works had a religious theme, others were portraits, and others simply captured the elusive light of daily life with a vibrancy that was missing in post-mortal art. Longing and elation, anguish and joy—they were all there, sometimes commingling in the same canvas. It was in some ways unsettling, but compelling as well.
“Can we stay in this room a little longer?” Rowan asked, which made the scythe smile.
“Of course we can.”
The museum had opened by the time they were done. Other patrons gave them a wide berth. It reminded Rowan of the way they treated him in school. Citra still seemed to have no clue why Scythe Faraday had called them—but Rowan was beginning to have an idea.
He took the kids to a diner, where the waitress sat them immediately and brought them menus, ignoring other customers to give them priority. Perk of the position. Rowan noticed that no one came in once they were seated. The restaurant would probably be empty by the time they left.
“If you want us to provide you with information on people we know,” Citra said, as her food came, “I’m not interested.”
“I gather my own information,” Scythe Faraday told her. “I don’t need a couple of kids to be my informants.”
“But you do need us, don’t you?” Rowan said.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he talked about world population and the task of the world’s scythes, if not to level it, then to wrangle it to a reasonable ratio.
“The ratio of population growth to the Thunderhead’s ability to provide for humanity requires that a certain number of people be gleaned each year,” he told them. “For that to happen, we’re going to need more scythes.”
Then he produced from one of the many pockets hidden in his robe a scythe’s ring identical to the one he already wore. It caught the light in the room, reflecting it, refracting it, but never bending light into the heart of its dark core.
“Three times a year, scythes meet at a great assembly called a conclave. We discuss the business of gleaning, and whether or not more scythes are needed in our region.”
Citra now seemed to shrink in her chair. She finally got it. Although Rowan had suspected this, to actually see the ring made him shrink a bit, too.
“The gems on scythe rings were made in those first post-mortal days by the early scythes,” Faraday said, “when society deemed that unnatural death needed to take the place of natural death. There were many more gems made than were needed at the time, for the founders of the Scythedom were wise enough to anticipate a need. When a new scythe is required, a gem is placed into a gold setting and is bestowed upon the chosen candidate.” He turned the ring in his fingers, pondering it, sending refracted light dancing around the room. Then he looked them in the eye—first Citra, then Rowan. “I just returned from Winter Conclave and have been given this ring so that I might take on an apprentice.”
Citra backed away. “Rowan can do it. I’m not interested.”
Rowan turned to her, wishing he had spoken. “What makes you think I am?”
“I have chosen both of you!” Faraday said, raising his voice. “You will both learn the trade. But in the end, only one of you will receive the ring. The other may return home to his or her old life.”
“Why would we compete for something that neither of us wants?” Citra asked.
“Therein lies the paradox of the profession,” Faraday said. “Those who wish to have the job should not have it . . . and those who would most refuse to kill are the only ones who should.”
He put the ring away, and Rowan let out his breath, not even realizing he had been holding it.
“You are both made of the highest moral fiber,” Faraday told them, “and I believe the high ground on which you stand will compel you into my apprenticeship—not because I force it upon you, but because you choose it.”
Then he left without paying the bill, because no bill was, or would ever be, brought to a scythe.
• • •
The nerve! To think he could impress them with airs of culture, and then reel them into his sick little scheme. There was no way Citra would ever, under any circumstances, throw away her life by becoming a taker of other people’s lives.
She told her parents what had happened when they got home that evening. Her father embraced her and she cried into his arms for being given the terrible proposition. Then her mother said something that Citra was not expecting.
“Will you do it?” she asked.
The fact that she could even ask that question was more of a shock than seeing the ring held out to her that morning.
“What?”
“It’s a difficult choice, I know,” her father said. “We’ll support you either way.”
She looked at them as if she had never truly seen them before that moment. How could her parents know her so little that they would think she’d become a scythe’s apprentice? She didn’t even know what to say to them.
“Would you . . . want me to?” She found herself terrified of their answer.
“We want what you want, honey,” her mother said. “But look at it in perspective: A scythe wants for nothing in this world. All of your needs and desires would be met, and you’d never have to fear being gleaned.”
And then something occurred to Citra. “You’d never have worry about being gleaned either. . . . A scythe’s family is immune from gleaning for as long as that scythe’s alive.”
Her father shook his head. “It’s not about our immunity.”
And she realized he was telling the truth. “It’s not about yours . . . it’s about Ben’s . . . ,” Citra said.
To that, they didn’t have an answer. The memory of Scythe Faraday’s unexpected intrusion into their home was still a dark specter haunting them. At the time, they hadn’t known why he was there. He could very well have been there to glean Citra or Ben. But if Citra became a scythe, they never needed to fear an unexpected visitor again.
“You want me to spend my life killing people?”
Her mother looked away. “Please, Citra, it’s not killing, it’s gleaning. It’s important. It’s necessary. Sure, nobody likes it, but everyone agrees it has to happen and that someone has to do it. Why not you?”
Citra went to bed early that night, before supper, because her appetite was a casualty of the day. Her parents came to her door several times, but she told them to go away.
She had never been sure what path her life would take. She assumed she would go to college, get a degree in something pleasant, then settle into a comfortable job, meet a comfortable guy, and have a nice, unremarkable life. It’s not that she longed for such an existence, but it was expected. Not just of her, but of everyone. With nothing to really aspire to, life had become about maintenance. Eternal maintenance.
Could she possibly find greater purpose in the gleaning of human life? The answer was still a resolute “No!”
But if that were the case, then why did she find it so hard to sleep?
• • •
For Rowan, the decision wasn’t quite so difficult. Yes, he hated the thought of being a scythe—it sickened him—but what sickened him more was the thought of just about anyone else he knew doing it. He didn’t see himself as morally superior to anyone—but he did have a keener sense of empathy. He felt for people, sometimes more than he felt for himself. It’s what drove him into Kohl’s gleaning. It’s what brought him to Tyger’s side each and every time he splat.
And Rowan already knew what it was like to be a scythe—to be treated separate and apart from the rest of the world. He was living that now, but could he bear to live it forever? Maybe he wouldn’t have to. Scythes got together, didn’t they? They had conclaves three times a year and must befriend one another. It was the world’s most elite club. No, he didn’t want to be a part of it, but he had been called to it. It would be a burden, but also the ultimate honor.
He didn’t tell his family that day, because he didn’t want them to sway his decision. Immunity for all of them? Of course they’d want him to accept. He was loved, but only as one among a group of other beloved things. If his sacrifice could save the rest, the greater familial good would be served.
In the end it was the art that did it. The canvases haunted his dreams that night. What must life have been like in the Age of Mortality? Full of passions, both good and bad. Fear giving rise to faith. Despair giving meaning to elation. They say even the winters were colder and the summers were warmer in those days.
To live between the prospects of an unknown eternal sky and a dark, enveloping Earth must have been glorious—for how else could it have given rise to such magnificent expression? No one created anything of value anymore—but if, by gleaning, he could bring back a hint of what once was, it might be worth it.
Could he find it in himself to kill another human being? Not just one, but many, day after day, year after year, until he reached his own eternity? Scythe Faraday believed he could.
The following morning, before he left for school, he told his mother that a scythe had invited him to become his apprentice and that he’d be dropping out of school to accept the position.
“If you think that’s best,” she said.