False Hearts (False Hearts #1)(48)

I wasn’t in the mood for this. I’d believed it all, once upon a time, to a point. I don’t know why I was never as completely under Mana-ma’s spell as the others, what in me refused to give in. After we found the tablet, something irrefutable had changed in me. I knew this place wasn’t where I wanted to be. That Mana-ma might not be the real voice of God. It’s a scary thing, when all the beliefs you have shift under your feet like that. I didn’t know who to trust, how to feel, if my morals were my morals, or just the Hearth’s.

Taema spoke first. I listened to the gentle sound of her voice, my eyes half-closed.

“When our heart hurt,” she said, “I didn’t think of the Creator, or light, or goodness, like I should have done.”

“And what did you think of, my child?”

“I knew my soul could leave, and that I should prepare it since I’d have the time, but all I could think of was the pain, and that I didn’t want to die. All was dark and cold. I was scared.”

Mana-ma leaned forward. “Did you have a vision? The Creator will sometimes deign to visit one so close to beginning the Cycle again.”

“N-no…” My sister shook her head, shamefaced, hands clenching. I hated to see how easily Mana-ma could influence Taema’s emotions. Not that Taema was weak—far from it—but she was sensitive. Mana-ma made her feel like she had been wrong for no reason.

I had an idea, but I decided to wait my turn as I played it over in my mind.

“What other darkness lives in you, child? Speak it and let it free.” I fought the urge to curl my lip and slap her away from us. How had I never seen what a spider she was?

“What else?”

Taema licked her lips. “The Meditation frightened me.”

Mana-ma nodded. “I know, my child. God’s world is terrifying and vast. But, together, we may access it. This is our purpose. Do not be afraid. This is wondrous. This is transformative. This is divine.”

I noticed she danced around saying what it was for.

“I will try,” Taema whispered.

“Anything else, my child?”

Taema tried to think of something else. Bless her. She had to dig deep to bring up any darkness. It was all too easy for me to think of dark things, but I’d long since stopped telling Mana-ma about them. Partly because I didn’t want Taema to hear what went on in my head. Mostly because I hated the way Mana-ma sucked it all up, reveling in the darkness of her flock.

Taema eventually muttered something about how she dreamed of the world outside, and Mana-ma perked up at that, rearranging herself in her seat, like a cat puffed up at a threat.

“Outside is where no one listens to God—to the birds and the trees and the ways of the world. They think all must bend to their will. They change the land, their bodies, regardless of how the Creator made them, their very souls. They think they can make themselves perfect, spitting in the Creator’s face, for my Husband has already made them perfect. Really, they sully all that they touch, and you must never forget that. Now, let that darkness leave the room, never to return.”

“Yes, Mana-ma.” Taema was all meek, and I wanted to pull my lips back from my teeth and snarl. “That’s all, Mana-ma,” my twin finished.

Mana-ma waved a bit of smoking sage incense around Taema’s head, though of course that made me cough, too. She and Taema hummed the One Note, and my face squished up because it was right against my ear.

Then Mana-ma turned her attention to me.

“Tila, my child,” she intoned. “Envision the darkness flowing from you, pooling on the floor, ready to leave and return to the Earth…”

I imagined so much flowing out of me that it flooded the room to the Moroccan lamp hanging from the ceiling, but Tila and I floated on it while Mana-ma squatted at the bottom like a sunken stone. A few bubbles burst from below, then all was still. Then the darkness that had been in me carried us away from Mana’s Hearth out to the wide world, to San Francisco, dropping us off in Golden Gate Park. The darkness flowed back into me, and I was just like I’d been before.

“Have you completed the visualization?” Mana-ma asked.

I opened my eyes and smiled. “Yes.”

“What darkness must you give name to so that it may have no power over you?”

“I thought about dark and pain instead of light and goodness when I thought I would die, too. My soul wouldn’t have been Pure.”

Mana-ma’s eyes lit up. “And did you have a vision?”

“I did.”

Taema turned her head. She almost always knew when I was lying. This time she didn’t know why.

Mana-ma’s eyes shone and she took my hand. Her touch was all cool and clammy. I fought the urge to take my hand and wipe it on my shirt. “Tell me what you saw, my child.”

She bought it. I think most people in the outside world think the people at the top of Mana’s Hearth know it’s all a crock of shit—that they’ve been shrewd enterprisers since the beginning—but I think Mana-ma believes. She believes just as much as, or more than, anyone else in the Hearth. That’s why what I did next was just so easy.

“I saw a man I’d never seen before and he was yelling at me to turn back, that what lay before me was only wretchedness. That everything I’d been told was a lie. He even told me who he was.”