THE THREE LIVES OF CHRISTINA THE ASTONISHING (#46)

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

Thus began the long and complicated business of socializing the Frog Creek cow-girl, a process that would alter me for better but also for worse. Even in the tiny world of the settlement my manners had always been judged poor. It was Belinda who taught me how to eat properly, how to thank people, how to soften overly truthful judgment without being hypocritical. The court of Sequoia educated me in different ways, about which more later. The Duke himself, by means of a raised eyebrow or some such subdued facial expression, signaled to me when I had committed a gaucherie—such as, to name only one offense out of many, blowing my nose on the ground without benefit of handkerchief—and I was grateful for the unexpected kindness he showed me by refraining from  reprimand or mocking laughter. Very gradually, then, my rough edges were smoothed over and I took on the persona of a public official of some sort.

The first time the Duke called on me to peek over the fence of our material world in front of others, I looked over quickly at Chickie, lounging with Jonathan on the other side of the Duke’s chair. His opaque button eyes told me I was on my own. And that was how I learned to tune directly into Giver, who resides in that dimension outside time and space in which past, future, and present all run together as one. I struggled to turn the pictures Giver sent me into words that made sense. I told the Duke that shifting currents on the southern continent would bring storms this winter, that the vineyard owners deep inland wanted to split off from Sequoia and form their own duchy and, privately, that the young woman he currently desired wanted another man, not him (but I wouldn’t say who, to spare the man’s life).

(to be continued tomorrow)