Thunderhead

At the new Great Library of Alexandria, Munira Atrushi works as a part-time curator. The library houses millions of scythe journals that have been collected since the beginning of the scythedom, and Munira rarely meets visitors during her long graveyard shifts. However, one night a strange man approaches Munira and asks her about the early writings of the founding scythes. Munira knows that this man is a scythe, and as she takes him to the Hall of the Founders, she realizes she is talking to Scythe Michael Faraday, who is supposed to be dead from a self-gleaning the year before. Although she tells him he can access hundreds of selected readings on the sycthedom’s public server, he tells her that he is interested in seeing “[readings] that have not been ‘selected’” (150). In the Hall of the Founders, Faraday reveals that he knows about Munira’s past and how she tried to become a scythe but “failed” her apprenticeship. He asks Munira if she is “loyal” to “the system that discarded [her]” (154), and he correctly guesses that Munira chooses to work in the library among the scythe journals because she wants to prove herself invaluable to the scythedom. He asks Munira to allow him to come to the library night after night and keep his identity a secret while he looks for something among the Founding Scythes’ journals.