“But isn’t that, like, cheating in a way? That they’ll only believe in me because I’m telling them what they want to hear?”

“Honey, what’s the difference, so long as they believe? Because we are the light-bringers, remember? We banish darkness from the earth. Anyone who opposes us is the darkness. Is it not better for them to come to the light by any means necessary?”

“I guess,” I said. “I just thought they would come because of me. I mean, because of us, the Farm, how good it is.”

“Lee, that’s why they’ll stay. Because we are good, and we do help the world. That’s the truth. Sometimes people just need a little push to take that first step. And that’s what you’ll be giving them.”

“But I’m not giving Horace a push. I feel like we’re torturing him.”

“Horace is a threat,” she said, “and threats need to be eliminated. Did he not cause your mother’s death? And knowing what he does, couldn’t he destroy the Farm and everything we’ve worked so hard for? Everything my son died for? Isn’t it better this way, to bring him into the light? Would you prefer for us to kill him?”

“No,” I said. “Absolutely not.”

“Then it’s settled. The lessons will continue, though not necessarily with Horace quite yet.”

“What does that mean?” I said.

Grandma just smiled all secret.

“Watch and see.”

With four days left before the first Gathering, the whole Farm was busy preparing. Nearly everyone would be there by then, even the stragglers. I knew more would come soon. They would journey from far and wide to join our family, to hear my visions, to hear the secret wisdom Jeremiah and the Spirit had in store for them. Already my eyes were becoming sharpened, my visions brighter and clearer. Sometimes it was hard to keep straight what was real—what was objectively there right in front of me—and what existed purely in the other plane. The worlds were becoming intertwined, like the way colors bleed through one page and onto another.

The Spirit was drawing other people to me too, working in me to bring them into the fold. Like this one woman, maybe about sixty-five or seventy, who came walking up to me in the fields. I’d never seen her before. She had hair down to her butt and a kind of embarrassed smile on her face. She held a wicker basket in her hands with a blanket over it, like she was going to a picnic.

“I made a thing for you,” she said and offered me the basket.

“Thank you,” I said. “Um, I don’t think we’ve met.”

“Oh shoot, gosh,” she said. “You’re right. I’m Willamette Darling.”

“It’s a pleasure,” I said. “I’m Lee Sanford.”