“Every seven years, seven persons from each of the ten towns must go into the desert, where they will enter into the realm of Elovah, their God.”
No one knows exactly what happens to these seventy Tithes, but everyone knows who: the “unworkables,” those with differing physical and mental capacities. Joshua Barstow, raised for twenty years among her town’s holy women, is one of these seventy Tithes. She is joined by the effervescent Lynna, the scholarly Avery, and the amoral Blue, a man who has spent most of his life in total solitude. Each night, an angel swoops down to take one of their numbers. Each night, that is, except the first, when the angel touches Josh… and leaves her. What is so special about Josh? She doesn’t feel special; she feels like a woman trying to survive while finally learning the meanings of friendship, community, and love. How funny that she had to be sacrificed to find reasons to live. Read an excerpt. Available from Amazon. |
THE TITHE excerpt
“What’s your best memory?”
Blue sat beside her, a statue painted in colors he would never know. “There isn’t. Child or adult, my memories are of existing. I ate, I slept, I listened to services. Sometimes the food was worse, sometimes the services more interesting. But there’s nothing like happiness or sadness. There only was.”
“Was what?” she asked softly.
“Me.”
She shook her head. “It sounds so sad.”
“It wasn’t. You can’t have sadness unless you know happiness. I knew neither.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes.
Finally, in a voice mere decibels from a whisper, Josh asked, “What about now?” Shameless, she knew, but maybe voicing the question would exorcise it.
“Why are you asking a question you already know the answer to?” he asked in his inflectionless voice.
“I don’t,” she insisted.
“Everything changed when you touched me,” he said.
After a confused moment, and with many darting glances, she asked in a low tone, “In bed?”
“In the hallway. You touched me, and my life cleaved into a before and a now. Before, I existed, and it was fine. I was content. And then, you. Everything cracked open, and I felt as if I’d just reminded my senses to function. Now, everything feels so raw. Sometimes just the passing of time abrades my skin. Being with you is exquisite and real. And painful.”
Very carefully, Josh put her hands on her knees and leaned forward. She stared at the wall opposite them, against which Taro no longer pressed himself. In she breathed, and out. In and out.
No, she didn’t understand. Or, maybe a little. When she was a young girl, maybe six or seven, a new imrabi had made it her goal to befriend her. Josh hadn’t known what to think of this tall, strong young woman, her right cheek and half her brow stained with a wine-red birthmark. Her name was . . . well, honestly, Josh didn’t remember her name. The imrabi hadn’t stayed long. Another rab’ri had needed her.
The woman must have pitied her, this plain, sassy little girl who dressed herself in the morning and braided her own long brown hair. She made it a point to sit with her during services, to sneak her chocolate milk and extra biscuits, to ask her about herself. Josh had responded cautiously, although she’d never refused a single buttered roll.
Then, one time, the imrabi decided to tickle her. It was what adults did with children, but Josh had no way of knowing that. She only knew few of the imrabi spoke with her, let alone showed her physical affection. When the woman’s fingers brushed against the sensitive undersides of Josh’s arms, she shrieked. The imrabi, mistaking Josh’s reaction for laughter, persisted.
Unsure what to think, only knowing the strange, almost painfully tender feeling of the woman’s fingers on her own untouched skin, Josh began screaming. The woman rocked back in alarm, overbalanced, and fell on her bottom. Josh’s screams bounced off the stone walls, rebounded, scratched at her own ears. The imrabi stared hard at her before rising to her grand height and quitting the room without a word.
The woman never spoke to her again, and a few months later, she left their rab’ri.
Twenty-year-old Josh straightened her posture and rubbed her calf with her other foot. “What can I do to make it hurt less?” she asked him.
Blue’s lips thinned into a smile. “I don’t want it to hurt less. Every second that scrapes my skin is another one I spend with you.”
She wasn’t used to being precious to someone. Tolerated, of course. Special, sure—no one catalogued and organized the rab’ri’s library with her level of efficiency. But not cherished, treasured, adored.
At the end of my life. The end of my life. She bowed her head, clenched her fists. Six years she’d known about this, six years she’d prepared. She’d never wanted to die, but she’d been ready for it—until coming here.
The worst part? Knowing her time with her friends, these people who had become as dear to her as breathing, might end tonight. Or tomorrow night. Or in ten nights. But soon. Surely she should hope the angels came for her before everyone else.
Stop being selfish, she thought, before her diaphragm clenched in a single laugh. Was she being more selfish in hoping she died first, or last?
Sometimes she thought leaving them here for another seventy days was the cruelest thing Elovah could have visited upon them.
Blue’s hand grabbed hers, and she held on tightly, willing to pretend for a moment it anchored her in this dust storm of uncertainty.
Blue sat beside her, a statue painted in colors he would never know. “There isn’t. Child or adult, my memories are of existing. I ate, I slept, I listened to services. Sometimes the food was worse, sometimes the services more interesting. But there’s nothing like happiness or sadness. There only was.”
“Was what?” she asked softly.
“Me.”
She shook her head. “It sounds so sad.”
“It wasn’t. You can’t have sadness unless you know happiness. I knew neither.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes.
Finally, in a voice mere decibels from a whisper, Josh asked, “What about now?” Shameless, she knew, but maybe voicing the question would exorcise it.
“Why are you asking a question you already know the answer to?” he asked in his inflectionless voice.
“I don’t,” she insisted.
“Everything changed when you touched me,” he said.
After a confused moment, and with many darting glances, she asked in a low tone, “In bed?”
“In the hallway. You touched me, and my life cleaved into a before and a now. Before, I existed, and it was fine. I was content. And then, you. Everything cracked open, and I felt as if I’d just reminded my senses to function. Now, everything feels so raw. Sometimes just the passing of time abrades my skin. Being with you is exquisite and real. And painful.”
Very carefully, Josh put her hands on her knees and leaned forward. She stared at the wall opposite them, against which Taro no longer pressed himself. In she breathed, and out. In and out.
No, she didn’t understand. Or, maybe a little. When she was a young girl, maybe six or seven, a new imrabi had made it her goal to befriend her. Josh hadn’t known what to think of this tall, strong young woman, her right cheek and half her brow stained with a wine-red birthmark. Her name was . . . well, honestly, Josh didn’t remember her name. The imrabi hadn’t stayed long. Another rab’ri had needed her.
The woman must have pitied her, this plain, sassy little girl who dressed herself in the morning and braided her own long brown hair. She made it a point to sit with her during services, to sneak her chocolate milk and extra biscuits, to ask her about herself. Josh had responded cautiously, although she’d never refused a single buttered roll.
Then, one time, the imrabi decided to tickle her. It was what adults did with children, but Josh had no way of knowing that. She only knew few of the imrabi spoke with her, let alone showed her physical affection. When the woman’s fingers brushed against the sensitive undersides of Josh’s arms, she shrieked. The imrabi, mistaking Josh’s reaction for laughter, persisted.
Unsure what to think, only knowing the strange, almost painfully tender feeling of the woman’s fingers on her own untouched skin, Josh began screaming. The woman rocked back in alarm, overbalanced, and fell on her bottom. Josh’s screams bounced off the stone walls, rebounded, scratched at her own ears. The imrabi stared hard at her before rising to her grand height and quitting the room without a word.
The woman never spoke to her again, and a few months later, she left their rab’ri.
Twenty-year-old Josh straightened her posture and rubbed her calf with her other foot. “What can I do to make it hurt less?” she asked him.
Blue’s lips thinned into a smile. “I don’t want it to hurt less. Every second that scrapes my skin is another one I spend with you.”
She wasn’t used to being precious to someone. Tolerated, of course. Special, sure—no one catalogued and organized the rab’ri’s library with her level of efficiency. But not cherished, treasured, adored.
At the end of my life. The end of my life. She bowed her head, clenched her fists. Six years she’d known about this, six years she’d prepared. She’d never wanted to die, but she’d been ready for it—until coming here.
The worst part? Knowing her time with her friends, these people who had become as dear to her as breathing, might end tonight. Or tomorrow night. Or in ten nights. But soon. Surely she should hope the angels came for her before everyone else.
Stop being selfish, she thought, before her diaphragm clenched in a single laugh. Was she being more selfish in hoping she died first, or last?
Sometimes she thought leaving them here for another seventy days was the cruelest thing Elovah could have visited upon them.
Blue’s hand grabbed hers, and she held on tightly, willing to pretend for a moment it anchored her in this dust storm of uncertainty.