THE THREE LIVES OF CHRISTINA THE ASTONISHING (#20)

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

The baker didn’t notice my burned hands when he came in at noontime. He only saw I’d loaded and unloaded all the trays and kept the wood ovens stoked just as he’d asked me to and he was satisfied. He went back to the front room, where a constant flow of customers was streaming in, and we worked straight through until evening, when most of the bread had been sold. He pulled down a sheet of corrugated iron over the front entrance and came into the kitchen rubbing his hands in anticipation.

“Time to eat!”

I nodded though even now I wasn’t really hungry, I just liked the way the baked bread smelled. It made me feel like I was back home in the cabin at Frog Creek when my parents were still alive. Though she tried, Matilda had never learned how to bake bread as well as my mother could.

(to be continued tomorrow)