The Toll (Arc of a Scythe) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,40
and mirrors. Platitudes about leaps of faith and the like. But instead he got serious and cocked his head to one side as if listening to something in his earpiece. Then he spoke with absolute certainty.
“Ezra Elliot Van Otterloo, although you never use your middle name. When you were seven and got angry at your father, you drew a picture of a scythe coming for him, but got scared that it might actually come true, so you tore it up and flushed it down the toilet. When you were fifteen, you put a particularly awful-smelling cheese in your brother’s pocket, because he was going on a date with a girl you had a crush on. You never told anyone, and your brother was never able to identify the source of the smell. And just last month, alone in your room, you drank enough absinthe to put a mortal-age man into the hospital, but your nanites protected you from the worst of it. You woke up with nothing more than a fading headache.”
Ezra found himself weak all over. He trembled, and it was not from the cold. These weren’t things the curates could be feeding him. These were things that only the Thunderhead could know.
“Is that enough proof for you?” the Toll asked. “Or do you want me to tell you what happened with Tessa Collins on the night of senior prom?”
Ezra dropped to his knees. Not because he was told to by some officious curate, but because he now knew that the Toll was what he claimed him to be. The one true link to the Thunderhead.
“Forgive me,” Ezra begged. “Please forgive me for doubting you.”
The Toll approached him. “Get up,” he said. “I hate when people kneel.”
Ezra stood up. He found that he wanted to look into the Toll’s eyes, to see if they held the infinite depths of the Thunderhead, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Because what if the Toll saw all the way through him, to places Ezra didn’t even know existed? He had to remind himself that the Toll wasn’t all knowing. He only knew what the Thunderhead let him know. Still, access to all that knowledge was intimidating – especially when no one else had it.
“Make your request, and the Thunderhead will respond through me.”
“I want direction,” Ezra said. “The direction it once promised it would give me, before we were all marked unsavory. I want it to help me find purpose.”
The Toll listened, considered, and then said, “The Thunderhead says you can find fulfillment by painting unsavory art.”
“Excuse me?”
“Paint murals of the things you’re truly feeling in places that you’re not supposed to paint them.”
“The Thunderhead wants me to break the law?”
“Even when the Thunderhead spoke to people, it was happy to support an unsavory lifestyle for those who chose it. Being an unsavory artist might be the purpose you’re looking for. Spray-paint a publicar in the middle of the night. Paint an angry mural on your local peace officer headquarters. Yes, break the rules.”
Ezra found himself beginning to breathe so quickly he was hyperventilating. No one had ever suggested that he might find fulfillment by breaking the rules. Ever since the Thunderhead went silent, people were falling over one another to follow rules. It was as if a stone had been lifted from his soul.
And he left to begin his new life as an unrepentant artist.
A Testament of the Toll
His seat of mercy rested at the mouth of Lenape, and there he would proclaim the truth of the Tone. Awesome was he in his splendor, such that even the slightest whisper from his lips would peal like thunder. Those who experienced his presence were changed forever and went out into the world with new purpose, and to those who doubted, he offered forgiveness. Forgiveness even for a bringer of death, for whom he did sacrifice his life, in his youth, only to rise again. All rejoice.
Commentary of Curate Symphonius
There is no question that the Toll had a grand and glorious throne, most likely made of gold, although some have posited that it was made of the gold-plated bones of the vanquished wicked of Lenape, a mythical city. Speaking of which, it is important to note that le nappe, in the French language spoken by some in ancient times, means “the tablecloth,” thus implying that the Toll set a table before his enemies. The mention here of a bringer of death refers to