False Hearts (False Hearts #1)(35)

“You cheered me up and no mistake,” he said when we’d run out of grapes. We reached through the window, each of us holding out a hand. He reached out with his one hand and clasped both of ours in it. I remember his skin was so warm. Too warm.

“We’ll come visit you every day until you’re well,” we promised.

But he was gone the next day.

Considering the rudimentary medicine, there weren’t actually that many deaths in Mana’s Hearth. His was such a shock for Taema and me. We couldn’t cope. He was there, and then he wasn’t. We’d never see him again. We lay in bed, arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders, foreheads pressed against each other, just sobbing. It wasn’t fair.

There wasn’t a funeral; we didn’t really have them in Mana’s Hearth. We didn’t gather around a corpse and plant it in the ground, or burn it up. I knew they did something with the body, but not exactly what. People mourned, and people would still talk about Adam and others who died and say they missed them; but there’d be no celebration, or wake, or anything like that.

Seems backward too, doesn’t it? Looking back now, I see that, but the Hearth doesn’t celebrate beginnings or endings. We focused on celebrating the day-to-day life that continued. The passing of seasons had a special meaning for us, but other holidays that lingered on from past religions we had nothing to do with. In the Hearth there were no Christmas trees or Hanukah menorahs.

I tried to convince Taema to get a Christmas tree, the first year we were living in San Francisco, but she didn’t want one.

“We’re never going to believe in it,” she said.

“Does anyone? It’s a tree in the living room with pretty lights, and there aren’t many Pagans around anymore. Santa Claus and a tree have nothing to do with Jesus. And not a lot of people seem to believe in him here, either.”

“Shouldn’t we celebrate winter?”

“Why? We don’t believe in Mana-ma or her God anymore, either.”

She had no answer to that.

Back then, it was almost time to celebrate summer. Taema and I dragged our feet as we made our way to the church, wearing our best dress. It wrapped around our conjoined torso, but we’d taken the time to have it fit around each of our waists. Taema had green ribbon and I had blue. The skirt swished around our legs, edged with hand-stitched lace.

We stood near the back, since the pews were too uncomfortable for us to sit on—the hard wood dug into our sitz bones. We still hadn’t gotten over Adam, and we were feeling pretty morose. Nobody even spoke about him—as if he’d shamed us by getting ill enough to die. I looked at the backs of all the heads of the people sitting in the church, and realized a lot of them might not even know that Adam could have been saved. And that somehow made his death even sadder.

Adam’s death was the first thing that made us really think about leaving. Strange, isn’t it? We’d willingly let ourselves be mentally tortured, but that wasn’t what made us want to run. It was a boy dying who could have been saved.

Mana-ma was up on the pew at the front of the church. She was the minister, the wife of God, the mayor, everything. She always wore a plain black robe, as if she were mourning all the sin we were surrounded with in the outside world. Everyone in the audience was wearing white with just a little bit of color. Summer was the season of prosperity and warmth—yes, I know, not that it ever really got that cold in winter, compared to, say, Minnesota—and it was a reason to celebrate. The mushroom crops were growing well in the greenhouse and the fields were lush; aside from the small issue of Adam, health was pretty good. No drama. If there ever was anything, it was swept under the rug to be whispered about after lights out.

So we celebrated summer. We sang the old songs, like “Let’s Live for Today,” “Everlasting Love” and “Wonderful World, Beautiful People.”

None of you reading this will probably have heard of these songs, but I still love them, despite everything. They remind me of the good parts of the Hearth. The bees buzzing, the scent of flowers in the warm breeze, the feel of the water and sand from the lake between my toes. We had a bunch of vinyl, and a record player that they must have replaced part by part over the years. Taema and I sat in our room and listened to the music a lot. I miss music, here in this cold, dark cell.

When we moved to San Francisco, we tracked down a lot of it with some of our early wages, going pale at how much it cost on the original vinyl. So we bought the songs on the modern players, but they didn’t sound the same. We still listen to “The Sound of Silence” together, remembering all we’ve lost.

On the day we celebrated summer, we sang loud and clear, our voices lifting to the rafters, and Mana-ma read from the Good Book.

It was a little different, that particular summer celebration. Mana-ma mentioned Adam. She decided she wanted to say something, so she could. That was the hierarchy; if we were sad and wanted to remember him, we couldn’t publicly without her say-so. We couldn’t change anything in the Hearth, because we didn’t hear the voice of God.

“I know that we do not acknowledge endings often,” she said. “Especially at the beginning of such a warm and prosperous season, but God spoke to me last night. He told me that today, we should have a moment to mourn Adam.”

There were quiet murmurs in the crowd.

“The loss of Adam reminded me of all the other losses we’ve had through the years. God told me that they are never truly gone. He wanted me to remind you all that those we have loved have returned to the Cycle, to bloom elsewhere in the universe. Remember that in times of sadness, and remember the light. Every time you see the glory of God and nature, remember that those we loved are still a part of it.”