THE THREE LIVES OF CHRISTINA THE ASTONISHING (#18)

As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words
A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World

How I came to live and work in a bakery, and demonstrated my powers
My stay in the Official Orthodox Holy Giver House of Francisco Kingdom lasted only a week.  During that time the sisters treated me very kindly. They told me the mural, though it was of the white city, was also supposed to represent the world of Light and Love, which they believed looked exactly like their own city once had. I knew otherwise—the world of Light and Love is, as the name implies, a noncorporeal realm composed entirely of light energies—but it didn’t seem polite to say so and besides, even the ruined beauty of their city made me understand how they could make that mistake.
As true believers, I felt, these holy women had no need for proof of the world of Light and Love. Therefore I refrained from leaping into the air or showing any other of the powers my indestructible mortal body possessed.
Still, Giver kept moving me day and night, singing and twirling, singing and twirling. At the end of the week the leader asked me to leave. My outbursts, she said, disrupted their quiet observances. I have never cried much in my life but I was so heartbroken to be told this I shed tears. Then Giver whispered in my heart this place was not really holy even though it was beautiful, and so I walked down the hill from the plaza to seek my fortune elsewhere in the city.

I crossed a broad empty boulevard to a district with smaller shabby buildings that were still mostly intact. More people were out on the streets here; the smell of cooking food was everywhere, especially the wondrous odor of baking yeast bread, sweetest of earthly smells not least because it was made from plants and therefore not offensive to my stomach newly transformed by Giver. I followed my nose to an open doorway next to a window with the single word BAKERY painted in green on it.

Inside a chubby young man stood behind a glass display case.  He had apple cheeks and wore a jaunty white cap perched on his head. His little eyes glittered. “What can I serve you, my dear?”

I looked at the rolls and cakes and baked goods inside the case. Then I looked at the golden brown bread loaves stacked in baskets on top. “I have no coin,” I said.
He looked me up and down. “Can you lift heavy things?”
“I can lift anything,” I said, though he had no way of knowing this was not idle boasting.
“My worker’s not in today. If you help me, you can eat all you want.”
“I would like some of this freshly baked bread, but not very much,” I answered. “I will be glad to help you.”

(to be continued tomorrow)