This is the writer's voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treasman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Kirsten Valdez Quaid read her story,

Christina the Aston-Astonishing, 1150 to 1224, from the July 31st, 2017 issue of the magazine.

Kirsten Valdez-Quaid's debut story collection, Night at the Fiestas, was published in 2015 and received the John Leonard Prize from the National Book Critic Circle.

Now here's Kirsten Valdez Quaid.

Christina the Astonishing 1150 to 1224. Nevertheless,

her sisters and friends never stopped their persecution, for after she had returned to a place where they could seize her, they bound her fast with a heavy wooden yoke and fed her

like a dog with only a little bread and water. No one there had compassion for her wretchedness.

Thomas de Contemporay 1201 to 1272. How she was led forth from the body and how she lived again.

The priest holds the host aloft, the linen sleeves of his alb, falling around him like wings.

He intones the anus day, and we sing with him. I can scarcely form the words my throat is so clotted with grief.

Beside me, my sister Gertrude tightens her grasp on my hand.

Anus dei, Quittolis peccata, Mundi.

Christina lies in her coffin, her cheek sunken, her slender hands crossed over her heart.

Now with her troubled soul gone, Christina is easier to look at.

Alive, even in sleep, she kicked and growled and twitched.

For the first time in the 21 years I've known her, my sister seems at peace.

A grave awaits her in the churchyard,

a hole sliced into the earth. Water pools in the cold mud at the bottom, flashing in the sunlight and reflecting the sky. We were five in our family, then three, and now we are just two.

And even as I weep for our little sister, I thank God that it is Christina in the coffin,

and not Gertrude, the sister I can't live without.

...