THE THREE LIVES OF CHRISTINA THE ASTONISHING (#49)

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

The very next morning I said goodbye to Belinda outside the Lady House. Then before her startled eyes—for by this point I rarely used my physical superpowers—I rose straight up in the air, soared over the compound, and headed north to the redwood forest. There I lit down happily in the top of that great tree I’d taken shelter in before. Groaning with relief, I crawled into the familiar hollow and slipped at once into deep meditation. In my trance state now I could send my soul anywhere on the planet, but I asked it to hold still. Instead of embarking on meaningless adventures on earth, I needed to raise my consciousness to the point where I could clearly see the true path that kept eluding me.
Why am I here? That was the question I put again and again to Giver and my higher self. Only Giver’s silence and the small noises of the creatures native to the redwood canopy came back to me.
For the first time I began to doubt what had happened to me. Maybe I hadn’t really died; maybe I’d merely hallucinated and willed myself to achieve my special abilities thanks to an unusually strong immune system. So I’d heard voices, danced like a dervish, and mistook my native intuition for psychic powers. I was hardly better than a common madwoman. No, I was a madwoman.
Perched at the top of the three-hundred-foot tree I had flown to.
Very well, what had happened to me was real. I had died and gone to another dimension and come back with supernatural powers, most notably the indestructible mortal body I was now saddled with. But I hated being at the Duke’s court. I hated the Duke. He was never going to change; he’d simply found a way to exploit the gifts Giver had bestowed on me. I was his freak, all right, just like I’d been Travis’s freak at the place called Fillmore in the great city.
This had to change.
(to be continued tomorrow)