Flame in the Dark (Soulwood, #3)

by Faith Hunter

My home is a lot of things. It’s Soulwood—a plot of land that I claimed with my sweat and blood. Home is Unit Eighteen, a place I can work and be of use in the world, a place where I have value. Home is family I can come visit, but not be tied to. Home is choice. A chance to grow. To learn. Home, meaning my life and where and how I’ll live it. That’s what home means to me, Mud.”

I can, maybe, help you learn how to control your gift. How to explore it. If that is what you want. But not if you stay at God’s Cloud. Not if you live here. Not if you make church land your home instead of the whole world your home. You will have to choose what home is to you. You. Not the mamas or Daddy. You. You have to decide what you want.”

Teaching a child to be free wasn’t a matter of telling her once and being done. It was a long battle of opportunities offered and worldviews explored. And if this conversation came back and caused me trouble, then . . . I’d deal with it.

“Programming can be hardwired into a body,” I said, not looking up. “It’s something that has to be fought, day in and day out, forever. Like an addiction one hates, has defeated, yet still has to battle.”

“Lots of the church folk beat their young’uns. But ninety-nine point nine times out of a hundred, a whuppin’ isn’t necessary. It’s the adult’s emotional problem, not the kid needing a beating.”