Uxana is brought back to consciousness with a physically violent jolt. Immediately, she suspects Zila, or what’s left of her, has somehow managed to harness the constant ongoing barrage of emanating power waves electric in the air around them.
However, finding Zila possibly even more languid than when Uxana momentarily left her, it’s suddenly more likely that it’s Uxana’s younger and more receptive mentat to the rescue.
The girl is determined to make the best of a window of opportunity she doesn’t even know for how long will exist.
“I need answers, Zila!” Uxana insists. “Focus! Focus!”
Even assuming Zila’s eyes are somewhere near her mouth, it’s impossible to determine the where of them.
“I haven’t a clue how to handle this, Zila,” Uxana continues by stating what has to be the obvious. “You have to help me. You must know something.”
“For answers, you need the Book of Answers,” Zila says.
Uxana wonders if her wax-and-flesh mentor is being sarcastic.
“Yes, certainly the Book of Answers is one answer,” Uxana agrees. “Not having it, though, you’re going to have to do.”
“I’m beyond doing,” says the blue-wax maw that moves. “In fact, I’m nearly done.”
“No!” Uxana insists.
The combination of flesh and wax flickers as if a magnified version of the flame wavering atop the lop-sided candle beside it. Upon the resulting wavy mirage-like surface, an image of the once whole Zila appears, like a previously snapped photograph projected upon a rolling wave.
“You must be the one to focus, Uxana!” the visage insists, fades, then solidifies into its previously monstrous form.
“Focus on what?”
“On what I need mentat-tell you, now,” the waxy blue hole says.
When finished with its ensuing telepathic telling, it punctuates with, “Now haul me to the lip of this cave.”
“Now?”
“With what little sense I have left, I sense something there that you need see.”
“Shouldn’t I monitor the candle I’ve lit?”
“This candle you have lit is nothing but another pool of dead wax, my dear. You know that. I know that.”
Uxana is reluctant to touch the mass of flesh and wax that Zila has become. When she does, she’s disturbed by the heat and cold, the soft and hard, of the contrasting surfaces.
Somehow, though, she lugs her one-time mentor to the vertical gap that opens this hole in the earth onto the world outside; the once Primary Blue Candle of the Sisterhood has become no more than a seeming sack of speaking potatoes.
“You’ve brought us here to see the dawn?” Uxana wonders aloud.
“What dawn rises in the west?
”Uxana senses distraught and frantic human beings just beneath the pretty pink that tinges the skyline of the horizon.
“One of but many monsters serves up a human barbecue,” Zila says. “More and worse will occur if you don’t find a way to intervene.”
Without forewarning, the flesh and wax monstrosity tips over the edge of the precipice.
Uxana makes a grab, momentarily has hold of it.
“Don’t be a fool child,” Zila pleads. “Not fallen, I’m only a hindrance.”
Still, Uxana is determined not to let go. By way of proof that she doesn’t, are the powdery bits of candle wax that are all-too-soon all that remain in her clutching fingers.
Uxana reflexively, frantically, washes her hands in midair and releases candle dust that begins its slow float to rejoin the majority of Zila, late great Primary Blue Candle of the Sisterhood, that makes a sickeningly loud resounding thud on the dry-as-bone canyon floor.
Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE
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