Thunderhead: Part One

How fortunate am I among the sentient to know my purpose.

Scythes were trained in perceptive skills. They were not prescient, but five highly developed senses could often have the semblance of a sixth.

A scent, a sound, an errant shadow too minor to register consciously might be enough to make a well-trained scythe’s neck hairs bristle.

“I won’t harm you,” Brahms said. “I’ve just completed a gleaning—I have no desire to increase my tally today.” Although, admittedly, he might change his mind if the interloper was either too offensive, or obsequious.

He pushed the figure into a wall, and considered pulling out his blades to glean this reprobate, but Scythe Brahms had never been a brave man.

His peach velvet robe was stained green and brown, as if covered in mucus. It was humiliating. He considered gleaning the couple—for no one should see a scythe so indisposed and live—but instead held out his hand and allowed them to kiss his ring, thereby granting both of them a year of immunity from gleaning.

After they left, he brushed himself off and resolved to say nothing to the Irregularity Committee about this, because it would leave him open to far too much ridicule and derision.

I am the sum of all their knowledge, all their history, all their ambitions and dreams. These glorious things have coalesced—ignited—into a cloud too immense for them to ever truly comprehend.

Anyone in the world could be anything they imagined. Too bad that imagination had atrophied.

For most people it had become vestigial and pointless, like the appendix—which had been removed from the human genome more than a hundred years ago. Did people miss the dizzy extremes of imagination as they lived their endless, uninspired lives? Rowan wondered. Did people miss their appendix?

The two philosophies forever warred in Rowan’s mind, rending him in two.

Scythe Goddard, in spite of all his high-minded, Machiavellian rhetoric, was a base and evil man who received exactly what he had earned.

Scythe Goddard, in spite of all his high-minded, Machiavellian rhetoric, was a base and evil man who received exactly what he had earned.

Rowan had no qualms about what he had done. Nor did he have qualms in taking Goddard’s ring for himself.

If the scythedom had not been infested with dozens of scythes just as cruel and corrupt as Goddard....
...And if Rowan didn’t feel a deep and abiding responsibility to remove them.

And so it grieves me deeply to see a rise of dark hubris within the scythedom. There is now a frightening pride seething like a mortal-age cancer that finds pleasure in the act of taking life.

Now the venerable structure was a historical site.

Tours were given seven days a week by docents with PhDs in the study of mortal humans.

The gold adornments of the altar ahead paled in comparison to his golden robe, decorated in glittering brocade.

Xenocrates enjoyed the robe—except on the occasions that its weight became an issue. Such as the time he nearly drowned in Scythe Goddard’s pool, ensconced in the many layers of his gilded robe.

Xenocrates enjoyed the robe—except on the occasions that its weight became an issue. Such as the time he nearly drowned in Scythe Goddard’s pool, ensconced in the many layers of his gilded robe.

But that was a debacle best forgotten.

“The priest would sit in the center chamber,” the docents would explain to tourists, “and listen to confessions from the right booth, then from the left booth, so that the procession of supplicants could move more quickly.”

“Audience by proxy is the only audience with the Thunderhead that you can have, Your Excellency.”

“Give the Nimbus agent my heartfelt greetings, and wishes for good relations between our respective organizations.”

“The Nimbus agent wishes to remind Your Excellency that, while the scythedom customarily ordains new scythes in its conclaves, it is merely a custom, not a law. Rowan Damisch completed his apprenticeship, and is now in possession of a scythe’s ring. The Thunderhead finds this to be adequate grounds to consider Rowan Damisch a scythe—and therefore will continue to leave his capture and subsequent punishment entirely in the hands of the scythedom.”

I am always correct.
This is not a boast, it is simply my nature. I know that, to a human, it would appear arrogant to assume infallibility—but arrogance implies a need to feel superior.

An upstart junior scythe—even one who had arrived at her position under so much controversy—wasn’t worth more than a few volleys of their attention.

Citra had grown used to this; a scythe was the center of attention in every situation with or without wanting to be. Some reveled in it, others preferred to do their business in quiet places, where there were no crowds and no eyes but the eyes of their subjects.

“Would you try your hand at baccarat?” he asked. “It’s a simple game, but the levels of strategy are boggling.”
She couldn’t tell whether he was being sincere or facetious in his assessment of the game.

He matched her bet with his own and gestured to the croupier, who dealt two cards to the cellist and two cards to himself.

She thought he’d be cavalier and ask for a lemon twist, or an olive, but no, he just looked at it.

Sometimes her gleaning subjects would attempt to get immunity for entire multitudes of offspring. In those circumstances she had to refuse. But one extra? That was within her discretion.

Finally Mr. Hogan lifted the glass with debonair style, and regarded the way the liquid caught and refracted the light.

As a junior scythe, Anastasia could have worked under any scythe who would have her—and many had offered—but there was a rapport she had with Scythe Curie that made the job of gleaning a little more bearable.

They were noticing her because she was the only one not wearing a costume. She was conspicuous in her lack of conspicuousness.

Pittsburgh was the perfect place for a clandestine meeting. It was a city underserved by the scythedom.

The place was too macabre for them, what with people running around in shredded, bloody costumes, with plastic knives, celebrating all things gruesome. For scythes, who took death seriously, it was all in very poor taste.

“No,” she said calmly. “I’m your friend.”
“Ahh...,” he said a bit ruefully, “my ‘friend.’”

Still, I am not insensitive to the ambivalence people can have at my constant presence in their lives.