THE THREE LIVES OF CHRISTINA THE ASTONISHING (#37)

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 in the castle of Sequoia and the miracles I performed there

Clad only in a rough burlap shroud (all they had by way of clothing in the Hygiene Maintenance Facility) and bouncing, reshackled, under wire netting in the back of a jolting wagon, I was forced to recall that coming back from the dead was a slower process than recovering from life-threatening injuries. It was hard to think clearly. The deep pain those crackling wires had delivered was embedded in every fiber of my indestructible mortal body.
Just the same, I marveled that the Duke had spared my life. His harsh judgments were legendary and I had no reason to think he would look more kindly on me than he did on any other poor wretch under his jurisdiction.
After half an hour’s journey we came to a high walled metal gate that stood open—the Duke’s carriage had just preceded us—and pulled into a large compound whose centerpiece was the long, low concrete building I had seen from the air when I flew to the redwoods. The driver did not stop at its entrance but took the wagon around the side to a shabby two-level wooden house covered in ornate latticework, a relic from times a good two centuries before the Great Miasma. He came around to the back of the wagon and dumped me unceremoniously on the ground. “Madame Belinda,” he bellowed, “Come fetch this unnatural bag of bones!”
A plump grey-haired woman in a long, formerly fine white gown appeared in the doorway. She walked hesitantly out onto the sagging porch and peered at me.
“Who is this?” she whispered to the driver.
“Christina the Astonishing,” I said proudly from the ground.
“How do you do, Christina?” To the driver: “Keys, please.”
“Duke says keep her shackled or she’ll fly away, literally.”
“Give them to me.”
He shrugged and tossed the battered metal keys in the dirt. Flicking the whip, he drove the wagon away in a cloud of dust. The woman looked down at me. She had grey hair and a finely wrinkled face. Her eyes were kind, kinder than any I’d seen since being in the Official Orthodox Holy Giver House of Kingdom Francisco.

(to be continued tomorrow)