THE THREE LIVES OF CHRISTINA THE ASTONISHING (#26)

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

When I asked him where we were, Martin laughed. “Have you never been in a theater before?”

I shook my head.

“Have you seen traveling shows of entertainers in your duchy?”

Yes, I said.

“Well, this is a space for shows that don’t travel.”

Just then Travis’s voice came booming from the other side of the big black curtain. He was shouting for silence. When the noise subsided, I heard him cry, “Ladies and gentlemen, straight from the haunted forests of Sequoia—what you’ve all been waiting for—the woman who came back from the dead! Give it up for Christina the Astonishing!”

To my amazement, the curtain slowly lifted off the floor to a blast of cheers, whistles, and clapping of hands from the other side.

“Break a leg!” Martin whispered. He backed off grinning as the rising curtain revealed an enormous torch-lit room, almost as big as the Orthodox Official Holy Giver House, except this one was packed with hundreds of people facing me in tiers of chairs bolted to the floor. They were dressed as strangely as I was, in black velvet and leather and whiteface, with heavy chains draped around their waists and long pointed fingernails painted black. When the crowd caught sight of me, they hooted even louder.

I had never before in my life been in front of so many people, and something in me, the old nagging hunger to be regarded, responded to it. It felt terrifying and wonderful at the same time.

(to be continued tomorrow)