As this had turned into an evening of answers, Citra dared to ask the question she had asked so inappropriately on the street, before the man’s body had even gone cold.
“Why did you glean that man today without warning? Didn’t he deserve at least a moment of understanding before your blade?”
This time Scythe Curie was not offended by the question. “Every scythe has his or her method. That happens to be mine. In the Age of Mortality, death would often come with no warning. It is our task to mimic what we’ve stolen from nature—and so that is the face of death I’ve chosen to recreate. My gleanings are always instantaneous and always public, lest people forget what we do, and why we must do it.”
“But what happened to the scythe who gleaned the president? The hero who went after corporate corruption that not even the Thunderhead could rout. I thought the Grande Dame of Death would always glean with greater purpose.”
A shadow seemed to pass over Scythe Curie’s face. A ghost of some sorrow Citra couldn’t even guess at.
“You thought wrong.”
* * *
If you’ve ever studied mortal age cartoons, you’ll remember this one. A coyote was always plotting the demise of a smirking long-necked bird. The coyote never succeeded; instead, his plans always backfired. He would blow up, or get shot, or splat from a ridiculous height.
And it was funny.
Because no matter how deadly his failure, he was always back in the next scene, as if there were a revival center just beyond the edge of the animation cell.
I’ve seen human foibles that have resulted in temporary maiming or momentary loss of life. People stumble into manholes, are hit by falling objects, trip into the paths of speeding vehicles.
And when it happens, people laugh, because no matter how gruesome the event, that person, just like the coyote, will be back in a day or two, as good as new, and no worse—or wiser—for the wear.
Immortality has turned us all into cartoons.
—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie
* * *
19
A Terrible Thing to Do
Citra wasn’t sure what possessed her to bring up the question she had been asked at conclave. Perhaps it was the unexpected closeness she felt to Scythe Curie after seeing her feed the grieving family and listen—truly listen—to their stories about the man she had gleaned.
That night, Scythe Curie came into Citra’s room with clean sheets. They made her bed together, and just as they finished, Citra said, “In conclave you accused me of lying.”
“You were,” Scythe Curie said.
“How did you know?”
Scythe Curie didn’t offer a smile, but she didn’t offer any judgment either. “When you’ve lived nearly two hundred years, some things are obvious.” She tossed Citra a pillow and Citra stuffed it into a pillowcase.
“I didn’t push that girl down the stairs,” Citra said.
“I suspected as much.”
Citra now clutched the pillow. If it were alive, she would have suffocated it. “I didn’t push her down the stairs,” Citra repeated. “I pushed her in front of a speeding truck.”
Citra sat down, turning away from Scythe Curie. She couldn’t look the woman in the face, and now she regretted having confessed this dark secret from her childhood. If the Grande Dame of Death sees you as a monster, what a monster you must truly be.
“What a terrible thing to do,” said the scythe, but her voice was even, not shocked. “Was she killed?”
“Instantly,” Citra admitted. “Of course, she was back in school three days later, but it didn’t change what I had done. . . . And the worst thing was, no one knew. People thought she had tripped, and all the other kids were laughing—because you know how funny it is when someone gets deadish by accident—but it wasn’t an accident, and no one knew. No one saw me do it. And when she came back, she didn’t even know.”
Citra forced herself to look at the Grande Dame of Death, who now sat in a chair across the room from her, gazing at Citra with those invasive gray eyes.
“You asked me the worst thing I’ve ever done.” Citra said. “Now you know.”
Scythe Curie didn’t speak right away. She just sat there, letting the moment linger. “Well,” Scythe Curie finally said, “we’re going to have to do something about that.”
? ? ?
Rhonda Flowers was in the middle of a midafternoon snack when the doorbell rang. She didn’t think anything of it until a few moments later, when she looked up to see her mother standing at the kitchen threshold with a look of such abject pain on her face, it was clear that something was very wrong.
“They . . . they want to see you,” her mother announced.
Rhonda slurped the ramen noodles that were dangling from her mouth and got up. “Who’s they?”
Her mother didn’t answer. Instead she threw her arms around Rhonda, giving her a bone-crushing hug, and melted into sobs. Then over her mother’s shoulder, Rhonda saw them. A girl about her age, and a woman in a lavender garment—clearly in the style of a scythe’s robe.
“Be brave . . . ,” her mother whispered desperately into Rhonda’s ear.
But bravery was about as far away as terror. There simply wasn’t enough time to summon either fortitude or fear. All Rhonda felt was a sudden tingling in her extremities and a dreamy disconnect, as if she were watching a scene from someone else’s life. She left her mother and moved toward the door, where the two figures waited.
“You want to see me?”
The scythe, a woman with silky silver hair and a steely gaze, smiled. Rhonda never considered that a scythe might smile. On the rare occasions she’d encountered them, they always seemed so somber.
“I don’t, but my apprentice does,” the woman said, indicating the girl. But Rhonda couldn’t take her eyes off of the scythe.
“Your apprentice is going to glean me?”
“We’re not here for gleaning,” said the girl.
Only after hearing that did the terror Rhonda should have felt finally blossom. Her eyes filled with tears that she quickly wiped away, as relief followed on terror’s tail. “You could have told my mother that.” She turned and called to her mother. “It’s okay, they’re not here to glean.” Then she stepped outside, pulling the door closed behind her, knowing if she didn’t, her mother would eavesdrop on whatever this was about. She had heard that traveling scythes would show up at people’s doors asking for shelter and food for the night. Or sometimes they needed information from people for reasons she could only guess at. But why would they specifically want to speak to her?
“You probably don’t remember me,” said the girl, “but we used to go to school together years ago—before you moved here.”
As Rhonda studied the girl’s face, she pulled forth the vaguest memory, and tried to grasp at a name. “Cindy something, right?”
“Citra. Citra Terranova.”
“Oh, right.”
And then the moment became awkward. As if standing on your porch with a scythe and her apprentice wasn’t awkward enough already.
“So . . . what can I do for . . . Your Honors?” She wasn’t sure if an apprentice warranted the title of “Your Honor,” but it couldn’t hurt to err on the side of respect. Now that she had time to let her face and name sink in, Rhonda did remember Citra. As she recalled, they didn’t like each other very much.
“Well, here’s the thing,” said Citra. “Do you remember that day when you fell in front of that truck?”
Rhonda gave an involuntary shift of her shoulders. “Like I could possibly forget it. After I got back from the revival center, everybody called me Rhonda Roadkill for months.”
Getting run over by a truck was perhaps the most annoying thing that had ever happened to her. She was deadish for three whole days, and ended up missing every last performance of her dance recital. The other girls said they did fine without her, which just made it worse. The only good thing about it was the food at the revival center on the day she regained consciousness. They had the best homemade ice cream—so good that she once splatted just to get another taste of it. But of course, leave it to her parents to send her to a cheapo revival center with sucky food.