We still ask this question, but its answer is not one for our age.
Now, in that time and in that place lived a woman called Huldah, who would become the first Prophetess. All the Prophets and ultimately the True King descend from her line. Huldah was by then already an aged woman, and in the seasons following the Blood Rain she was first among those who wanted to understand why the land had changed. Each day she went onto the saferoads and made meticulous records of what she saw: how many cattle, how many calves, where they seemed to be walking, how many dead lay around. Soon enough there were so few dead as to be accounted for merely by natural causes. Huldah kept track of the plants as well, for it seemed to her that corn grew in places where it never had been, and higher than she had ever seen in any person’s small garden, and there were soybeans again in the fields, and by and by she even saw wheat growing. But she dared not sample these blessings, for they grew some ways off the saferoads and she was still afraid. All the same, the people began to call the land the Garden, because it overflowed with abundance.
Huldah had two sons, Hector and Lee, but only one still lived with her in her small house in her settlement, which we still know by its ancient name: Lucas. At that time, Lucas was home to fewer than forty people, a fair-sized settlement for that time. Huldah’s older son, Hector, was married and lived in his own home, but her younger son, Lee, was her constant companion and joy. The records speak very clearly about Huldah’s love for Lee, for his energetic nature, for his curiosity and mischievous ways. He went with her everywhere while she was engaged in recording the effects of the Blood Rain.
Lee was by her side when at last she decided to sample some of the corn that had been growing, seasonless, for a year. Since the Disease first ravaged the world, fields where edible food could be grown had been reduced almost to nothing, as more and more land every year was found to be infected. But after the Blood Rain there had been no winter, only more and endless greenery, shooting toward the heavens, prairie grass growing even through the cracks in people’s floors. Huldah went with Lee off the saferoad and out into a field, and they took in a basket of corn and boiled the ears, and then Huldah did eat one, with Lee watching and waiting to record what happened to her, and then they waited another year to see if Huldah would die of Bent Head.
Bent Head is known to strike in a very predictable way, so after a year of no illness, Huldah rejoiced that the fruit of the land was edible again. She called her son Lee to her and instructed him to inform the settlement at once, but Lee determined he must try the food as well, and he ate it and called it Holy, saying it was from Heaven, and Huldah declared it must have been sent by the Astronauts who had left the earth so long ago. The Blood Rain had restored the earth at last.
They went together to tell the people that the land was cured.
Also at this time Huldah, an aged woman, discovered she was pregnant, although her husband had been dead for many years. The land itself had given her a child, she said, for what else could it be? She had long ago reckoned her childbearing years were finished, and yet she was plainly with child. Moreover, during the pregnancy her health flourished. She blazed with vigour and walked about unencumbered through her ninth month, going from settlement to settlement and telling the people to eat the fruit of the land, for the Disease had been conquered by the Blood Rain. She was the proof. This was the occurrence that convinced many people in Kansas that Huldah was a Prophetess, as she had been inspired to observe the effects of the Blood Rain. Some celestial courage had made her unafraid. For her bravery, she was called High Priestess, and people came to her from then on to beg her wisdom.
After the birth of her daughter, who was very respectfully named Rain, Huldah began to receive visions. Lee recorded these visions with care, so Huldah would know every detail of what she uttered in her trances. She saw visions of a king—not the king at the Cape but a holier, innocent king, the True King, whose reign would begin when the shuttles at last returned to earth. The Astronauts who had sent the Blood Rain would return only when this True King sat on the throne—only this king could save the world from destruction by the Disease, and only those who followed him would ascend to Heaven within the perfected shuttles. Only they would be transformed into light and cosmic radiance and go on and on forever. Glorify! This vision gave people hope, and they were overjoyed to hear that this king would come from Kansas. Who would have thought such a cursed place might give the world salvation?
Huldah’s most unhappy vision, however, concerned the Kansans’ ingratitude for the Blood Rain, which had poured from the mouth of the cosmos—a gift, just when the world most required it. And how had they responded? With feasting and dancing and singing and lovemaking, but no great gesture of thanks to the Astronauts in Heaven for sending the rain, nor
