“Your brother is a prophet, Murphy,” said Grandma. “Same as his uncle was. And you are his guardian, his keeper, just as your mother was meant to protect your uncle. She failed at this, and the boy died, and with him died our family, our Farm. We had to excommunicate your mother, send her off into the world, to somehow bring about Jeremiah’s return. We knew he wouldn’t leave us for long, that his spirit was here, wandering the woods. I myself saw him in his suit by the pond, and I swear to you he walked clean across the surface of the water, causing not a ripple. But mostly I saw him in the Hummingbird Grove, same as you did, Lee. That’s why I took you there day after day. I knew that was where he was most powerful.”

Murphy whispered, “We need to get the fuck out of here. These people are all nuts.”

“No, Murphy,” I said, “they aren’t. It’s true. I’ve seen Jeremiah. I’ve heard his voice whisper mysteries, and I’ve seen his visions, his secrets. Jeremiah is very much alive, and he talks to me. He talks through me.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I see him all the time, and I have ever since we got here. I think he’s been sending me visions ever since I was a baby.”

Murphy stared up at me, eyes gone wide open with terror, like she was just seeing me for the first time, like she’d never really looked at me at all.

I felt a stirring in my heart then, a kind of tremor deep in my soul that shook me down to my bones. I could feel something happening, a brightness to the air, a glimmer on everything around me. I was going to have a vision, I knew it—a big one, more vast and important than anything I’d seen so far. This vision would change me. It would crack my soul wide open.

“What’s happening to you?” said Murphy.

I tried to answer, but I couldn’t. My heart was beating near out of my chest, and I could feel my pulse in my fingers and toes, in my eyelids. My whole body thrummed with power, and the hairs on my arms and legs stood up. I felt like a human lightning rod, like a fork about to be shoved in a light socket.

Grandma gripped Murphy’s shoulder, her hand like a claw.

“Don’t you know?” she said. “Your brother is having a vision.”