Five chubby little hands shot into the air; five eager faces stared at me, hoping to be called upon. At some point between the ages of five and fifteen, that eagerness would be replaced with indifference, but in kindergarten, they still cared. They still wanted to please and to be rewarded for their effort.

“Elena.”

All five hands sank and four frowns emerged, while Elena beamed at me from her chair in the semicircle. “Devotion!” Her brown eyes sparkled with triumph. “That means we love the Church and we’ll love it forever!”

“Good!” But on the inside, some vulnerable part of me shriveled a little more at her enthusiasm for a child’s happy lie, which would surely mature into an adult’s bitter burden. “Who else?” The other four hands shot up again. “Dillon?”

He picked at the cuff of his white school shirt. “Obedience.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means you have to do what the Church says, even if you don’t want to. Just like at home, when your mom says you have to eat your peas, even though they’re yuck.”

I smiled at him, and my knee banged the underside of the short table when I tried to uncross my legs. “That’s exactly right.” But the Church’s “peas” were usually much more difficult to swallow. “And the third obligation?” The last three hands went up. “Jessica?”

“Penti…Penna…Pen…”

“Penitence,” I finished for her. “Good. And what does that mean?”

“It means that when you do something wrong, you have to feel bad about it. Real bad. And you gotta try to fix it.”

“That’s right. And—”

“Like with Matthew.” Elena’s smile faded and her little forehead furrowed. “He didn’t feel bad about what he said, so Sister Camilla made him feel bad.”

I glanced at Matthew Mercer’s empty chair, at the end of our semicircle. The rain was coming down so hard that I couldn’t see him through the window. I could only see gray misery and the steady pelting of rain against the glass.

“Okay, there’s one more.” I dragged my attention back to the kids in front of me, in their white shirts and navy pants, smaller versions of my own uniform. “The people owe the Church devotion, obedience, penitence, and what? Robby? Can you tell us?”

“He got the easy one…,” Jessica whispered, and I frowned at her.

“Worship,” Robby said. “That means you gotta love the Church.”

“Good.” At their age, faith was more about memorization than anything. Fortunately, five-year-olds have great memories. “Now let’s move on to something more fun. Who can tell me what we learned yesterday about soul donors?”

Hands shot into the air, and for the next few minutes, the kids explained to me that since the Great Purification a century ago, donors were necessary because babies without souls die within an hour of their birth.

“Who can tell me why there aren’t enough souls to go around anymore?”

Robby spoke quietly. The tone of our unit had changed, and he looked scared. “Demons ate them.”