The old city was wreathed wholly in fog. The hollow shells of blasted buildings loomed through the grey murk, tall shadows riddled with cracks and holes. On the streets far below, the shattered remnants of countless windows lay scattered about, and the occasional old vehicle sat abandoned, its tires flat and its hull dented.

In the doorway of one of the smaller buildings, the boy knelt and gathered up the fingerbones of an aged, half-scavenged skeleton into his little drawstring bag. It was a lucky find with the day so late. Once he was confident he had enough, he drew the bag shut and tied it to his belt again, hiding it beneath his coat.

Returning to the streets, he gripped his knife and kept his eyes set forwards. It always paid to be alert in the city. Let down your guard and a thief would snatch the bones from your pocket, or a screecher would dive down from the misty sky, or night would sneak up on you without the slightest warning.

That was just one of the many lessons the boy’s mother had taught him before the screechers got her. He remembered her showing him how to fight someone twice his size; how to pick a lock; how to cook food, scarce as it was; how to bandage a wound; even how to drive a car, in the rare case that he might come across one that was still usable.

She told him she had learnt all of that from her own mother, his grandmother, a woman she painted in such a formidable light that the boy had seized on her as a hero. The grandmother that had defended her daughter against three armed members of a gang, that had managed to kill a screecher by herself, that had climbed high into one of the broken skyscrapers to retrieve the bones they needed for dusk, and that had one day, without any sign of sickness of injury, simply dropped dead.

His mother had said that was the city’s doing. ‘It doesn’t like you to be too strong,’ she’d told him one evening. ‘If it thinks you’re a threat it’ll get rid of you, just like that. Just watch the gangs. They collapse as quickly as they pop up.’

The boy was still quite young, so he had only seen a few gangs in his time, but the sightings had been enough to tell him his mother had been right. One time, they came driving down the street in a procession of three cars, armed to the teeth with guns, and almost ran the boy over. He’d only escaped by throwing himself to the side of the road and lying there while they moved past. After he heard their screams, the sense his mother had drilled into him had been screaming at him to get on his way and ignore it, but his curiosity was always stronger.

He’d seen the head first. A severed head, with the eyes gouged out. It lay in the middle of the road, quite a way from the lacerated body it had once belonged to. Beyond it, the car appeared from the fog first as a silhouette and then as a slashed, dented, broken husk. Blood seeped from one of the holes in its side, and the boy remembered glimpsing corpses within. He left the scene quickly after that. He still didn’t know what had befallen that gang. Not screechers, that was not their work. Something else, something he’d never seen or even heard of.

As the memories swirled around his head, the boy walked aimlessly through the streets, checking the doorways and windows he passed every now and then, and always keeping one eye upwards. The true danger of the fog was always in the screechers. By the time they let out that piercing cry they were named for, they had already swooped out of it and were stretching their bony claws in your direction. The boy was incredibly lucky that none had ever aimed for him, but he had seen the danger first hand. One minute, his mother had been walking by his side; the next, she’d vanished into the sky. He’d never even found her body.

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Turning a corner, he came across an idol. They were a rare sight, so he stopped in front of this one to treasure the small time he had with it, staring up at its smooth stony form and into the dark eyes carved at the very top. The face beneath was uncertain yet all-encompassing. Everyone seemed to think it looked like their face, but the boy knew it was his. Some people said the idols were omens of ill, while others said they were good luck, a promise of a bountiful harvest of bones ahead.

The boy wasn’t sure what he believed, but he knew he felt comforted when he was near one. It seemed in some way that through their stone gaze he could see the gaze of his mother, and her mother, and all his forebearers, that somewhere and somehow his ancestors were peering through darkness and rock, out from those hollow eyes and watching over him, that when he was in their shadow nothing could harm him.

But when he craned his neck up and peered towards the sky and saw amongst the hanging fog and the shadows of broken skyscrapers a growing darkness, all the comfort in the world could not have stayed his fear. Night was coming. No matter what he felt, the logical part of him knew the idol would not shield him from what stalked the streets of that city when darkness fell upon the world. He had to find shelter before then.

Luck came in the form of an old house with strong walls and a door still clinging to its latches; a rare thing in the city. When the boy stopped at the doorway and peered through he saw two people sat in one corner of the spacious room within. They were dressed in thick, black clothing and glowered up at him from faces scarred and grim, and he thought looking at their weapons that they were probably a part of a gang, or had been, at some point. It didn’t matter; he would have more luck with them than with the night, so he stepped into the room and crossed to the corner opposite theirs, keeping his eyes low.

A glance showed him the bones at their feet, to his great relief. They would have no need of his. He sat down and emptied out his drawbag at his own feet. If there was one thing in his world more certain than death, it was the arrival of the Tithe Proctor.

The boy had never looked upon its face. He did not even know if it had one; he, like all others, kept his gaze fixed upon the feet of the Proctor. It was not exactly fear that drove him to it, but something quite different and much stronger. It was not a feeling he could name or truly describe ― all he knew was that he should not look at its face. He had snatched a glance at its back when it was leaving once, and felt strangely guilty ever since, though it looked only as he expected: a tall figure made of smoky shadows that trailed away in long wisps behind it as it walked.

Whatever the reasons, you did not look upon the Tithe Proctor, and you made certain you had bones for it when it came, for even if you did not, it would still collect.

It came that night, as it always did. The boy was huddled down, nibbling on what pitiful rations he had stowed in his bag, thinking about where he would next find some, when he felt the Proctor approach. No one could ever say how they knew it was coming. They just did. The boy slowly put down his food and let his eyes wander to the door. He held his breath as he waited, until that old wooden slab swung wide with a loud creak and the high wrench of rusted metal.

The boy dropped his eyes not a moment too soon. The Proctor stepped through the door, wrapped in silence. Though its feet left gentle imprints in the thin layer of sand and dust that caked the floor, no sound was raised by its passing. The boy waited, head down, as the Proctor moved first to the two people in the other corner, bent down, and gathered up their bones in its hands. Only, when it came to the boy and knelt too before him, those hands were empty again; ready to receive his own tithe. It took them, rose, and turned to leave. The door swung shut behind it.

Finally, the boy looked up and met the gaze of his two companions. He noted no malice in their eyes; only the same silent relief that gripped him every night, once the Proctor had gone. Wordless, he finished his food and settled down on the hard floor to take what sleep he could.