Chapter 19: DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE?

“Zila? Is that you?” Uxana asks the darkness.

“I’m weak,” comes the reply. “I can’t see? What is this?”

“There have been rejuvenation malfunctions,” Uxana says. She hopes against hope that her mentor, once fully revived, will have answers. She’s not encouraged by the fade-in, fade-out, quality of her Big Sister in The Sisterhood’s voice.

“Who are you?” Zila asks.

“Uxana.”

“Uxana Uxl? And the others rejuvenated before us?”

“So far, we’re the only two.”“Only two.

And am I suddenly blind in this rejuvenation?”

“Mine is the only wick to have spontaneously combusted. I’ve had to mentat-light all of the others, including yours which is now out. All but you and I have gone to pooled wax. Shall I mentat-light another candle-in-the-line?”

“Why not just mentat an artificial flicker, for the moment, dear? At least until I can get my bearings. I seem strangely lethargic.”

“Mentating artificial flicker isn’t in my repertoire,” Uxana reminds. “I’m newly promoted, remember? There was no time to bring me up to full speed before we waxed for the last flood.”

“Then, let me try,” Zila says.

Moments pass. The darkness stays dark.

“Zila?” Uxana asks finally.

“I’m weak,” comes the reply. “I can’t see? What is this place? What is this happening?”

Uxana shivers and not just because she’s cold.

“A rejuvenation malfunction,” Uxana reminds. “You were about to initiate an artificial flicker?”

“Is that in my repertoire?” Zila asks.

“Most things are in your repertoire,” Uxana reminds. “You’re a Sister of Primary Color — Blue.”

“Do you, my dear, like I, feel an absence of emanated energy to summon from the air around us?”

“I feel quantities never before felt. I fear we may even have overslept to a time when another purging flood, long overdue, is eminent.”

“I don’t feel the excess energy of which you speak. In fact, even what little powers I seem to possess seem draining, even as I speak. Why, do you suppose?”

“Let me try another candle,” Uxana insists.

She finds the pile, feel-sorts through the waxy columns to find one that’s hopefully not too flaky, too soft, too bored with worm holes. The one she finally chooses in desperation seems slightly misshapen, as if sagged slightly after removal from its mold.

She sets the retrieved candle on the flat surface of a rock. She hopes for a spontaneous combustion, but it doesn’t happen.

She finger-locates its wick, squeezes it three times between a forefinger and thumb.

“Lalina prtuxus reonlin,” she provides the initiatory mantra from memory.

She sits back. She concentrates. A mentat-light isn’t easy for her despite all of her practice over the last few hours.

“I thought you were going to mentat an artificial flicker,” Zila says, an obvious hint of whining complaint in her voice.

“I thought you were going to mentat an artificial flicker,” Uxana says, and tries to keep a hint of whining complaint from her voice.

“I’ve tried,” Zila says. “It’s not happening.”

“Qantum-lu splinx,” Uxana continues with the alternative. She wonders if she should start all over, if Zila’s interruption has interfered with the necessary wick-lighting formula.

“I’m cold,” Zila says.

“Flixim palenum plodnominium,” Uxana says. She waits. She thinks she’s failed. She prepares for a repeat.

The wick of the candle ignites.

“Yes!” Uxana self-congratulates. Only to see the full horror of what her conjured light reveals.

Zila — if what exists upon the rock can actually be called Zila — is a deformed conglomeration of live flesh and contorted blue candle wax wildly malformed to resemble neither candle nor Primary Color Sister of The Sisterhood.

“I can’t see,” the thing says. Its mouth is only recognizable by the way a hole in the macabre collage elastically concaves and convexes around its circumference.

Uxana, despite all of her mentat efforts to maintain consciousness, feels her knees buckle and make painfully hard contact with the stone of the floor.

For her, at least, darkness returns.

Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE