Obviously, that’s a huge tragedy and it’s not surprising Mazu was devastated, but she went pretty weird and dark afterwards, and in hindsight, I think that’s where a lot of her cruelty towards my mother and kids in general came from. She especially didn’t like girls. Jonathan had a daughter from his previous marriage, Abigail. Mazu got her moved out of Chapman Farm to one of the other UHC centres after Daiyu’s death.
I can’t say for sure when the idea of Daiyu being a kind of deity started, but over time, Jonathan and Mazu turned her into one. They called her a prophet and claimed she’d said all these spiritually insightful things, which then became part of church doctrine. Even Daiyu’s death was somehow holy, like she’d been such pure spirit she dissolved from the material world. My sister Becca used to claim Daiyu had had the power of invisibility. I don’t know if Becca actually believed this, or just wanted to curry favour with Jonathan and Mazu, but the idea that Daiyu had been able to dematerialise even before she drowned got added to the myth, too.
There were already two people buried at Chapman Farm when Daiyu died. I never knew the first guy. He was an American called Rusty Andersen, who used to live on a patch of ground on the edge of the Aylmerton Community. He was an army veteran and he sounds like what you’d call a survivalist these days. Mazu and Jonathan claimed Andersen had joined the church before he died, but I don’t know whether that’s true. He was hit and killed by a drunk driver on the road outside the farm one night, and they buried him at the farm.
The other man buried on the land was called Alexander Graves, who died in his twenties. He was definitely part of the church. I vaguely remember him being odd and chanting all the time. Graves’ family kidnapped him when he was out on the street collecting money for the UHC, but soon after they took him back to the family home, he killed himself. He’d left a will saying he wanted to be buried at the farm, so he was.
We all knew Andersen’s and Graves’ stories, because they were used as object lessons by Jonathan and Mazu, illustrations of the danger of leaving the farm/church.
Over time, Andersen and Graves became prophets, too – it was like Daiyu needed company. Andersen became the Wounded Prophet and Graves the Stolen Prophet, and their supposedly holy sayings became part of church doctrine, too.
