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Gregorio the candlemaker’s assistant awoke one cold and gloomy morning in the village of Albero to find that he had been transubstantiated into a creature of divine beauty. His hands, previously calloused and stained the night before, now possessed a preternatural softness and his rough uncombed hair had become lustrous strands of silk. “What has happened to me?” he thought, as his threadbare blanket fell lightly down his now impressively muscled abdomen. He could no longer feel his bed: he was floating a few inches above the mattress.
His glance went to his prized possession, his wooden icon of the Twisted One, sitting in the corner. A thick sap was oozing from the empty eye sockets, flowing down the body and pooling on the floor.
“I have been blessed by the Miracle!” he thought ecstatically. “No one would ever send an angel to work, and now I am an angel. This dreary day I can stay warm under my blanket for as long as I wish.” He stretched out with a smile and closed his luminescent eyes.
A knock came at the door. “Gregorio,” his mother called from the other side. “Wake up, it is time to go to work.”
He ignored this and kept resting. Ten minutes later, there was another knock. “Gregorio,” his mother called, more insistent this time. “Get out of bed, you must go to work. The candlemaker will be cross with you if you don’t arrive on time.”
He screwed his eyes tight in frustration. “I cannot go, mother.” He said. “I have been blessed by the Miracle, beautified and consecrated as one of great importance. I no longer have to make candles to serve the Father, my heavenly countenance is enough to please him.”
There was a silence. “But you still have to make money,” she responded. “So get up, you’re going to be late.”
Once again, Gregorio ignored this and pulled his silky hair around him. The knotted cords were radiantly warm.
Half an hour passed and there was another knock at the door. “Gregorio,” his mother called, this time sounding quite cross herself. “The candlemaker is here. He wants to know why you are late for work. I told him you were blessed by the Miracle, but he wants to speak to you for himself. If you open the door, he says he will forgive you your humble furnishings.”
There was a much meatier knock on his door, like someone with a hand with many rings was rapping now.
“Gregorio!” the candlemaker’s throaty voice said. “What’s the matter? You neglect to open the shop, waste my time and money coming over to check on you, and now I hear you are troubling your mother with this nonsense about the Miracle. I am amazed at you!”
“It is true,” Gregorio responded, still not opening his eyes. “The Miracle has blessed me with a new form, improper for labor. I am only resting now before I go out to gratify all with my presence.”
“Gregorio!” the candlemaker thundered. “Get out of bed, you layabout! We just received a big order from the Mother of Mothers for candelabras...someone keeps breaking all of theirs. Whoever the culprit are, they must be sent by the Miracle: they’ve made me a fortune! We might make more money from this than from our candles of vitality and fervour!”
There was a gasp. “Oh my!” his mother said, “I didn’t know that you made those beautiful candles! I saw one when I visited my cousin in the Brotherhood. Truly splendid work! I had no idea you made them.”
“Oh yes, ma’am.” the candlemaker cooed. He loved to be praised. “Those red and blue candles are our specialty. No candle in Cvstodia is holier! We have patronage from all the land, even the fine ladies from the covenant up the mountain. Fine pious damsels, indeed. Plenty of gold up there: would you believe they use it to hold burning oil ?” There was a rattle of jewelry, loud enough to sound distasteful. Gregorio’s mother made an appreciative sound, almost certainly nodding in vacant agreement.
“Be that as it may,” Gregorio said, “I cannot get up to go to work. In fact, I shall not: this exquisite form is not suited for twisting metal and searing wax.” He stretched his legs and pulled his blanket up around his shoulders.
“Gregorio, if you do not open the door this instant,” his mother hissed, “the candlemaker will kick the door open and I shall let him!”
At long last, Gregorio’s eyes snapped open. He had had enough. “Very well, mother!” he shouted, “Then cower before my holy visage and tremble at my wrath!” And he threw his blanket off, flew to the door, and flung it open.
His fiery radiance shone over the two onlookers, illuminating them. A swirling wind of his rage ruffled their clothes. A clap of thunder sounded over Albero, a grim augur of death and destruction, as even the very sky of Cvstodia spoke angrily in his favor.
“Finally, you’re up.” His mother said sternly. “Get your shoes on and go to work.” And she walked off to continue the laundry.
Gregorio floated in the doorway, stunned. The candlemaker turned to him smugly. “Just because you’re beautiful now doesn’t mean you can laze about,” he said. He brushed out his gold trimmed robe, his jeweled rings clinking on the ornamentation.
With nothing else to do, Gregoio begrudgingly went to work. He had barely been there fifteen minutes before he accidentally struck his index finger with a hammer, leaving a bright red bruise on his immaculate skin. He had never been very good at making candelabras.
Gregorio sighed and looked out the window. Across the street, a man with a pointed helmet and a knobbly sword was running by with an air of great purpose. “I wish I was him,” Gregorio thought longingly, watching him run off into the distance. “Just doing as he likes, with no boss.”
Fifteen minutes later he pinched another finger, this time hard enough to draw blood under the nail. A few drops fell onto the floor and sizzled against the rough stone.
“I prayed for the wrong blessing,” he thought, clutching his hand.
When the pain did not subside, he got to his knees (or as close as he could manage while floating). “Oh Grievous Miracle, this visage impresses no one and I fear every wound it receives will not heal. I shall bear this curse in your name, but please provide me one more kindness: strike my boss dead.”
The candlemaker saw him, tapped his hammer on the table, and shouted, “Gregorio! I don’t pay you to pray! Get back to work!”
Later that night, the candlemaker was lying in bed with his prized possession: a block of solid gold with an impression of his face carved in it. He was holding it above his head at different angles, imagining how he would look were it a mirror, making strange faces, when he was distracted by a flash of bright light out his window. He dropped the block on his face and it crushed his head.
The candlestick order for Mother of Mothers was significantly delayed and the church clerics had to raid their storage rooms for replacements. They found them to be significantly wanting, however, and each prayed to the Miracle that a competing candle shop would finally open in Albero to foster competition and drive down the prices.