“Don’t fight it, Lee,” said Grandma. “Your great-grandfather killed his own daughter to gain the power of the Spirit, my twin sister. He cut her throat, and the blood bound the Spirit to him for all his life. We drew lots, she and I. And my sister went willingly. She understood the price that had to be paid. I dreamed of this for myself, I always had. But my daddy wouldn’t let the Spirit pass on to me. He said it had to be a male child, his heir—that’s what the Spirit commanded. It hurt me. I wanted what you have, Lee, what Jeremiah had. But the Spirit chooses who it chooses, and it has chosen you, the same as it chose your uncle. We all have to make our own sacrifices.”

“That lady who tried to kill me,” I said. “Is that what happened to her daughter?”

“The girl was willing,” said Grandma. “It was her choice, her gift to our community. She was nearly dead anyway, the cancer all in her bones. All Jeremiah had to do was make a tiny slit up each wrist”—Grandma made a slicing motion with the knife—“and he held her in his arms while she bled away. It was quick and quiet and nearly painless. And the girl was taken up into glory.”

Grandma held the knife out to me, but I was afraid to take it. I backed myself against the wall of the shed.

“I would gladly have died for this community,” said Grandma. “But I was the one the Spirit chose to live. Just as the Spirit has chosen you.”

“I can’t do it,” I said. “I can’t just kill somebody.”

“But this is the scum who killed your mother!” said Grandma. “The wretch who spent his days on this earth terrifying you, ruining the life your mother built for you and your sister. Spoiling every last thing he laid his hands on. Don’t you remember? Don’t you hate him, Lee? Don’t you loathe his very bones?”

I did, I realized, and I felt the hate rising up in me. I heard whispers now, the Spirit speaking to me, the voice of Jeremiah chanting around me in a language I couldn’t understand. I felt the air alive and electric, the space between worlds grown thin, flimsy as paper.

“Take the knife, Lee,” said Grandma. “Take it and do what must be done. For your people, for your family.”

Her eyes peered into mine, the same strange brown as Mom’s, yellow-speckled like the last autumn leaf.

“You’re a good boy, Lee. You know what’s best for your people. You’re not even sacrificing an innocent, not like Jeremiah did, not like my own daddy did. You’re killing someone who hurt you, someone who deserves it. You’re serving justice right here on the Farm.”