False Hearts (False Hearts #1)(78)

This bogeyman came right into the center of the Hearth and stole a young girl from her own home. He drugged her and dragged her, kicking and screaming (evidently not loud enough to wake anyone up), into the forest. Under the silent redwood trees he had his way with her, holding a knife to her throat and saying if she screamed that he’d give her another smile. So he hurt her and she stayed quiet. Just as she was about to give up and scream so he would kill her (because people would somehow hear that scream), a brave member of the Hearth came to her rescue.

This upstanding member of the Hearth fought off the intruder and the miscreant was slain. Though the girl was obviously traumatized by events, through the help of the Hearth she was able to release the darkness the man had planted within her, at least for a time. Later, the darkness took hold of her again and nothing could be done for her.

“This tragedy is why we must remain separate,” Mana-ma would cry, holding her arm up high at the pulpit. “This is what we seek to prevent. For the Impure can poison the minds of the Pure, and we must guard that untainted spark within us all.”

It was always that sort of lesson—that the Impure would blemish us all and we were the last true humans, unaltered, unsullied.

The thing is: that’s not remotely what happened.


The Real Story

The man who came to the Hearth came to rescue the girl, not hurt her.

A gap in the story is, I have no idea how he knew her. Perhaps they met in the forest: her on one side of the former chain-link fence around the border, and him on the other. I could imagine the romance developing—putting their fingers through the metal wires and touching for the first time.

Eventually, the girl wanted to escape and they came up with a plan. When she didn’t stick to it, he grew worried. Thoughts swirled through his head: maybe her parents kept her in, or she even changed her mind at the last minute.

So he came into the Hearth, worried, not wanting to leave without her. She’d told him where she lived, and he peeked in her window.

He was seen.

The Hearth would automatically recognize someone not of their own, especially this boy in his synthetic clothing, bright green hair, moving tattoos on his knuckles.

They grabbed him, dragged him to the main chapel. Mana-ma had been roused from bed. I can imagine her, hair wild around her face, wearing her dark robes like a witch. The boy was nervous, probably a bit sheepish. Thought if he apologized and left, it’d all be OK.

Instead, they didn’t let him go.

He was thrown into one of the empty rooms that nobody used. They managed to get out of him who he was and why he was there. Then they went and got the girl.

The girl had planned to go. Her parents had caught her leaving with a small rucksack under her arm and locked her in her room. They were the ones to alert the watch, who had found the boy. The girl was more scared than the boy. She didn’t like the blank looks on their faces. They could be thinking anything.

Mana-ma was incensed. This boy had infringed on them, slipped past the toll roads, the infrequent park wardens, the fence, to come into the inner sanctum of the Hearth itself. The whole place would have to be Purified to prevent his presence from poisoning everything. The girl was sobbing, but the boy didn’t say anything. He knew crying wouldn’t solve anything when they’d already made up their minds.

They were all up all night, or at least all of them except the boy. He died at sunrise.

They didn’t kill him quickly. Mana-ma did most of it, with only her three trusted right-hand men. (Importantly, my parents weren’t involved. I think they learned about this after, and it was what put the biggest dent in their faith.) One restrained the boy and the other the girl. Throughout it all, Mana-ma lectured about the sins of evil and darkness, all while she tortured a boy to death in front of the girl who loved him. She used a scalpel, and she was delicate and dedicated in her work. The room was soundproof, so nobody else heard the screams.

They took the body of the boy away when the sun had crept over the tops of the redwood trees, but they weren’t done with the girl. Mana-ma used every trick in the book to brainwash and manipulate her. Before long, she believed it was her fault, that the boy was evil, that Mana-ma had saved her. Yet she was dead inside, walking around like a zombie, unable to feel happiness or sadness.

The spell didn’t last forever. Eventually, Mana-ma stopped paying such close attention to the girl. There were other things on Mana-ma’s mind besides a follower she thought had been dealt with. The girl started thinking again. Started waking up. And one night, deep in the dark when the moon was just a little sliver in the sky, she escaped and climbed over the chain-link fence, making her way to San Francisco, where the Hearth could not catch her.

When Mana-ma realized a member of her flock had fled, she was even angrier. That’s when the swamp was created. She said it was to protect us from those outside who would want to hurt us. It’s really to keep everyone inside.

*

These were the people Taema and I were raised with.

These were the people we were trying to escape from, naive and unaware of what we were really dealing with.

You must be wondering where I learned this story, if we didn’t know it when we left. Or perhaps you’ve already figured it out.

The girl in the story was Mia, the woman who took us in after we left. The woman who saved us before she damned me.





TWENTY-TWO