• • •
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.