The Toll (Arc of a Scythe #3) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,44

avoided if you try hard enough.”

She had first come to him for an audience on what had to be the coldest day of the year—which was even colder under the arch. She was so miserable, she forgot what she was there to ask and spent the whole time cursing the weather, and the Thunderhead for not doing more about it. Then she had pointed at the embroidered scapular that the Toll wore over his tunic.

“Have you ever run that wave pattern through a sequencer to see what it spits out?” she asked.

Turned out his scapular was seven seconds of a mortal-age piece of music called “Bridge over Troubled Water,” which made perfect sense, considering where the Toll had his audiences. He immediately invited Astrid to be part of his inner circle—a reality check against all the crap he had to face on a daily basis.

There were many days Greyson wished he was still laying low, unseen and unknown in his dark little room of the Wichita monastery, a nonentity who had even had his name taken from him. But there was no turning back from this path now.

* * *

The Thunderhead could read all of Greyson’s physiology. It knew when his heart rate was elevated; it knew when he was feeling stress or anxiety or joy; and when he slept, it knew when he was dreaming. It could not access his dreams, though. Even though everyone’s waking memories were uploaded to the backbrain on a minute by minute basis, dreams were not included.

It was discovered early on that when someone needed their brain restored—either a splatter or someone who had suffered brain injury in some other way—dreams became a problem. For when their memories were returned to them, they had trouble differentiating what was real from what was the product of dreams. So now when one’s mind was handed back to them in revival centers, they had every memory, except for the memories of dreams. No one complained, for how could you miss something that you no longer remembered you had?

And so the Thunderhead had no idea what adventures and dramas Greyson experienced in his sleep, unless he chose to confide them once he awoke. But Greyson was not one to talk much about his dreams, and it would have been too forward of the Thunderhead to ask.

It did enjoy watching Greyson sleep, though, and imagining what strange things he might be experiencing in that deep place that lacked logic and coherence, where humans struggled to find glorious shapes in internal clouds. Even while the Thunderhead was taking care of a million different tasks around the world, it still isolated enough of its consciousness to watch Greyson sleep. To feel the vibrations of his stirring, to hear his gentle breathing and sense how each breath ever so slightly increased the humidity in the room. It gave the Thunderhead peace. It gave it comfort.

It was glad Greyson never ordered the Thunderhead to turn off its cameras in his private suite. He had every right to request privacy—and if asked, the Thunderhead would have to oblige. Of course Greyson knew he was being watched. It was common knowledge that the Thunderhead was, at all times, conscious of everything its sensors were experiencing—including its cameras. But that it devoted such a large portion of its attention to the sensory devices in Greyson’s quarters was a fact it did not flaunt. For if the Thunderhead brought it to Greyson’s attention, he might tell it to stop.

Over the years, the Thunderhead had witnessed millions of people in each other’s arms, embracing as they slept. The Thunderhead had no arms to embrace. Even so, it could feel the beat of Greyson’s heart and the precise temperature of his body as if it were right beside him. To lose that would be a cause of immeasurable sorrow. And so night after night, the Thunderhead silently monitored Greyson in every way it could. Because monitoring was the closest it could come to embracing.

As High Blade of MidMerica, and Overblade of the North Merican continent, I would personally like to thank the Amazonian scythedom for retrieving the lost scythe gems and dividing them among the regions of the world.

While the four other North Merican regions under my jurisdiction have expressed an interest in receiving their share of the diamonds, MidMerica declines. Instead, I would ask that the MidMerican diamonds be shared by those regions who feel unfairly slighted by Amazonia’s unilateral decision to completely ignore regional size when apportioning