The Tithe Read online

  “Hi,” she said, and paused.

  “Hey,” Josh said into the silence and then wished she had remained silent. From others’ looks, they felt the same.

  “I’m Jeet,” she said, and paused again. “I, well, I thought it was good to get us all together so we could talk.” Another pause. “Talk about this situation and what we should do to remain faithful to Elovah’s plan.”

  Several people nodded or murmured in agreement.

  “We are Elovah’s chosen people, offered up to keep Her wrath from falling on our towns.” A little more poetic, Josh thought. She was really finding her minnabi-esque stride. “But not all of us are acting like it.”

  “I walked into a maintenance closet earlier today and found two unmarried people having sex!” a middle-aged woman declared.

  “I know about another couple having sex,” Mare announced in her quiet way.

  Josh wondered if she meant Lynna and RJ.

  “It’s like the people here don’t care anymore about Elovah’s rules,” Jeet agreed. “Like they think, ‘Oh, I’ve already earned my salvation. May as well live like a, like a Twelve!’”

  Josh twitched a bit in her seat, remembering her words to Garyn and the behavior of the couple in the bathroom this morning. Was there an unusual amount of unmarital sex among their numbers? Heck, she was raised by the imrabi. She had no idea what was typical or not of a group of people living their lives outside a bastion of morality.

  There’s that phrase again, she thought sourly. “Living their lives.” Ha.

  Maybe there were unusually high levels of unmarital sex among some of the unworkables here. But, really, was there something so wrong with finding comfort and affection during their final days? How many of them had ever had the opportunity to know that kind of touch? Orphans or—she sighed—prisoners at rab’ris, homebound incaps, social outcasts all: Who would court them, touch them, remind them that the science books said human touch is as basic a need as food and shelter?

  Now, at the end of their lives, banished and sacrificed to Elovah, some sought what they’d never known but always wanted, needed so much their body thrummed in pain and need, a note so quiet that until now, they hadn’t been able to hear it against the much sharper screams of more intense and obvious agony?

  Well, she noted, shaking her head, we’ve moved from the general to the specific, haven’t we, Josh?

  Elovah made their bodies to need this touch. Could it really be wrong, then?

  “You know how it says in the Bitoran that eating too much is a sin?” someone called out.

  “It says no such thing,” Josh snapped before she could help it. This must be someone from Victor, Lynna’s town. “It says in the Book of Salvation we are to distribute food among all of us and never again let our townsfolk go hungry, as the Twelves did.”

  The room remained silent for a moment.

  “Well, um, anyway,” the young, masculine voice continued, “I heard there was someone in the kitchen today, trying to eat all our food.”

  Also not exactly true, but Josh let it go. What had Kadin been doing? She remembered the narrow, angry look in his eyes as he stuffed more sugar into his slowly chewing mouth. He certainly hadn’t been worried about making sure they all shared equally in the kitchen’s bounty.

  “Sin and more sin,” Jeet acknowledged. Tufts of her hair floated in the breeze of her nods.

  “What are we going to do about it?” Netta demanded. “I’ve been seeing more and more people give in to their baser desires and forget they’re Elovah’s servants, destined to sit with Her and Her angels.”

  “Not all of us,” someone muttered, and several voices murmured in agreement.

  This meeting wasn’t a service; it was the formation of a group of self-righteous holies. Josh glanced up at Blue, standing near enough for her to touch. He remained entirely stationery, perfectly stoic. What did he think about all this?

  “What can we do?” another voice asked.

  “Lead by example?” Mare asked hesitantly.

  A few heads nodded.

  “Call people out when they’re being sinful,” Jeet added.

  More heads bounced.

  “Shaming them into behaving?” Josh blurted. “How often has that worked in the past?”

  “What do you suggest, imrabi?” someone asked.

  Josh sighed through her teeth. “I’m not an imrabi. I’m not anything holy. I’m just a person, like everyone here. And I think it’s a pretty bad idea for people who don’t know the Bitoran very well to go around accusing people of sin.”

  “I hardly think we need to have it memorized to know unmarital sex is forbidden,” Netta said in a chilly tone.

  Josh nodded in acknowledgement. “That’s true, but think about all these people here, fearing for their lives—”

  “This is a test!” Jeet cried. “Our time here is to see whether we’ll join Elovah or be forever outcast. How we act isn’t a matter for debate. Elovah’s rules don’t bend—only we do. We are here to show Her we can remain staunch in our final days.”

  “I’m glad you’ve figured it all out,” Josh said dryly.

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Jeet insisted.

  “Even if you’re right, I can’t see what good will come of shaming people.”

  “If you were violating Elovah’s laws, wouldn’t you like someone to care about you, to make sure you joined them in salvation?” Netta asked. Several people nodded. “Addressing their actions is a kindness, not a condemnation.”

  “And besides,” Jeet began. Wrinkles crowded around her narrowed eyes. “What if their efforts doom the rest of us? You know a town is only as holy as its most sinful citizen.”

  Josh paused. The Bitoran did say that. Everything they were saying sounded so rational, so much like something Minnabi Chester would have said. It was also wrong. If only she had the words to make them see.

  “We are from Elovah,” she began slowly. “Our bodies in Her image. Can listening to their desires be sinful?”

  Netta’s air hissed out from between the gap in her front teeth. “Our bodies betray us,” she ground out. “Do you think Elovah gave me cancer? Or gave Jeet her multiple sclerosis? Or made Keenan—” She touched the hair of the heretofore-silent young man beside her. He continued staring straight ahead. “—simple? Bodies always want, always distract, always get in the way of our spirituality. You have a wasting disease of the feet, Joshua. If you listened to your body, you’d never get out of bed in the morning. Our bodies are here for us to rise above, not to wallow within.”

  Josh felt heat light up her cheeks. She glanced at Blue for support, or maybe to witness his reaction. As always, he remained silent, motionless. Her feet, her legs. Who asked these people to address her incapacity? Her wonky legs were her business.

  “And no,” Netta continued, “Elovah won’t loosen her rules because we have it difficult. She’s a god of justice, not mercy.”

  So it said in the Book of Wrath. And how many times had she cursed her body for doing . . . all this . . . to her? How many mornings had she ground her teeth against the pain of leaving her bed, suffered the points and stares of townsfolk attending services, missed academic lectures and rab’ri-held weddings because her legs hurt too much? Betrayal. It was a harsh word, but didn’t she agree with it? Her body had betrayed her, had cut her life short and turned what was left of it into a well of embarrassment and pain.

  Her body had led her here, into the lives of people she liked. People she loved.

  And also to her death.

  “It says in the Bit’ only Elovah can judge,” she said, although she knew she’d lost. “And to always visit kindness on our townspeople.”

  Jeet smiled then, and her wrinkled face smoothed into a sheet of brown velvet. “What could be kinder than helping them achieve salvation?”

  Josh extended her hand, and without otherwise moving, Blue grasped it. She used his stability to help her rise. “I just can’t do this,” she
said. “I won’t spend my last days judging people whose shoulders bear the burdens of all ten towns’ worth of citizens.”

  “No one is forcing you to stay here,” Jeet said.

  “We certainly don’t want you here if you can’t do what needs to be done,” Netta added.

  Josh and Blue moved toward the door.

  “I’m sure you have nothing to worry about, Joshua, Blue,” Netta called as Josh reached the door. “Sleeping all alone in that hallway, I trust you stay strong.”

  A half-hour later, Josh berated herself for not turning around and snapping at Netta to keep her suppositions to her smug self or to thank her for reminding her why she was leaving their happy little group of Holies. She came up with a dozen witty, funny, and cutting remarks.

  In that moment, though, Josh did something that shamed her even then.

  She dropped Blue’s hand.

  Later, when the angel came, she reclaimed that hand. And then some.

  She, Garyn, and Lynna were debating with comical intensity the benefits of pants versus skirts when the lights in the Great Room snapped out of existence. Lynna’s word ended in the middle as though someone had sliced it in half. Her eyes jiggled toward RJ, who sat up higher in her chair. With a gasp, Lynna lunged forward and grasped Garyn’s and RJ’s hands.

  Josh had less than two seconds to note all of this before Blue swept his cloak around her and enfolded her into his arms.

  Although the cloak muted sounds, she heard the gasps and cries as others prepared themselves, fooling themselves with clasped hands, magical prayer words, or, yes, voluminous cloaks, into thinking they could in any way anchor themselves if the angel’s dreadful white eyes fell upon them.

  This time, her face pressed uncomfortably into the crook of Blue’s neck. Her nose smashed against his collarbone. She scooted her face downward just a bit, resting her forehead into the hollow and freeing her throbbing nose.

  Blue’s arms clasped, completely immobile and unyielding, seeming stronger than anything human hands could have fastened. She half believed he had the strength to defy the wills of angels.

  Against her lips burned the woven cotton of his shirt. She could smell him, a scent similar to her own but with more salt and lemon. The tip of her tongue flicked forward, and she tasted him under the crisp cotton of the shirt: a slight, astringent spiciness, like . . .

  KERACK!

  Inside the hoop of Blue’s arms, Josh jumped. The sound had come from directly overhead, practically on top of them. But . . . no. Wings snapped from farther away as the angel left them.

  Lynna, RJ, Garyn: Okay. Not taken. Blue: Here. Blue! Oh, thank you. Thank heaven. They were all safe.

  Thank you, Elovah, thank you. Irony, yes, but her overflowing relief required a focus.

  Someone groaned, a sound like giving birth. Josh had never heard someone give birth, but she imagined it sounded just like that: angry and weary at the agony of it all.

  Her chest constricted at the thought of losing someone, but it was something minute—a flicker of a taste, if you will—compared to what she would feel when she lost one of her friends. She was awful for wanting to keep her band together. It was selfish and individualistic, something she’d expect from one of the Twelves. But oh, she couldn’t stop herself from loving them all more than the rest of the Tithes.

  Inside her mouth, her tongue tingled.

  Blue swept the cloak from her, and she pulled away from him, swiping her hand across her mouth. Her gaze danced around the room, pausing over her untouched band of companions.

  Lynna, face pointed across the room, floated absently to her feet and started away from them. Garyn’s hand kept her tethered.

  “I’m just going to see what’s going on over there. Maybe I can do something,” Lynna soothed.

  Garyn, eyes enormous, nostrils widened, shook her head.

  “You can come, too,” the older woman said gently.

  Garyn, hand wrapped tightly in Lynna’s, followed.

  “This is a bad crop of jimson,” RJ muttered, staring over Josh’s shoulder toward the kitchen.

  “Yeah,” Josh agreed, although she’d never used the swear word.

  “Like it’s not enough we have to worry about our own sorry lives, but now we have to worry about everyone. By now, we know every single person.”

  Not me, Josh thought.

  “Hardest for people like Lynna, you know. She cares about everyone.”

  Lynna, ever sweet, ever generous, jumping up to help the survivors. And Blue thought she deserved saving.

  “You’re like that,” Blue told her. For the first time, she noticed his arm remained around her. “Lynna tends everyone’s feelings while you work for balance and fairness in the situation.”

  Josh stepped further away from him. His arm dropped back to his side. “How did you know?” she asked quietly.

  Blue smiled at her, a tiny spreading of his full lips. “Maybe I smell your thoughts.”

  What a bizarre thing to say. She looked to RJ, who quirked a cheek and shrugged.

  A few minutes later, Lynna and Garyn returned. The girl still clutched Lynna’s fingers.

  “They’re pretty sure it was Keenan.” Lynna sighed, sinking slowly downward.

  Garyn plunked down beside her.

  “Who’s Kee—?” Josh began, and then she remembered. Keenan, the “simple” boy at the meeting this afternoon.

  “Aw,” RJ said. “He was a sweet thing.”

  Lynna nodded.

  Who had groaned so piteously, with such bereavement, while the angel took him? Was it Netta, who had touched his hair with such fondness this afternoon? Jeet? Someone whose name Josh didn’t remember?

  “I’m going to bed,” she announced.

  Moments later, after emerging from an unoccupied bathroom, she stood beside Blue before his bedroom.

  “I . . .” She stopped.

  He stood silently before her.

  “It’s a sin,” she said, perhaps a bit too loudly.

  “The Bitoran doesn’t mention sleeping together,” Blue said mildly.

  “Well, yes, but . . .” Didn’t he know how good it felt? Didn’t he know?

  “I can sleep out here, Joshua.”

  “No, you can’t,” she snapped, but she didn’t move toward the room. Her leg muscles cramped and throbbed while she stood there, locked in indecision. She remembered how good, how achingly wonderful, it felt when they held one another.

  “Is my body betraying me?” she whispered.

  Blue took a step toward her. He was very close now. “You are your body,” he said, his eyes trained several inches above the top of her head.

  “Yeah, I know,” she said.

  “I don’t think you do,” he said. “Your body isn’t something that fights with you. You are your body. Your belly hungers, and you find food that tastes good and nourishes you. Your thoughts are painful for a long time, and you get sick. You feel physically comforted, and you feel safe.”

  “But Elovah wants me to control it,” she said slowly, chewing the words. “Right? I’m proving Elovah is more important. I need safety, I seek Elovah, not cuddling, not sex.”

  “If you get hungry, you don’t wait for Elovah to fill your belly,” Blue said.

  “The Bit’ tells us to share our food with the hungry. There are rules about eating. Why shouldn’t there be rules about how we seek companionship?” She shook her head. “No, I can’t believe it’s all right. I’m sinning.”

  Blue was silent.

  She took a deep breath, twisted the knob. “Shall we sin again?”

  Chapter 8

  For the first time in her twenty years, Josh knew real temptation. Not knew of it. Not felt a self-righteous joy in overcoming some small hurdle of will. After twenty years, she finally and completely tasted the candied sweetness of temptation.

  Awakening the following morning, she stretched and yawned. Her jaw cracked painfully. She lay on her back, and Blue’s head nestled in the space between her
arm and her side. Wavy black hair spread in glossy tangles across her chest. His warm breath feathered across her breast. He smelled delicious, like citrus and cloves.

  Looking down at him, she felt two threads, one sunshine yellow and soothing and the other gaslight blue, electrifying, and bottomless, twine in her chest. She wanted . . . she wanted . . . she wanted something. She wanted to cling to him, to warm her cool places, to revel in the comfort of being. She wanted something beyond warmth and into heat and breathlessness.