The Cycle

Chapter Seventeen

The tale was an arrow, and its aim, true—invisible words made alive—which sailed with light that pierced her phantom body, illumine her heart and mind, lighting its dark parts and unveiled memories, which invoked visible effects—upon and within her—that though her being was but a mental representation in the shared consciousness: the tears came, and her knees trembled, then gave out from under her.

    Tear filled eyes, made the dark skinned woman who towered her kneeled figure, seem as an image painted on clear but rippling waters. Zalima herald’ a change, which altered her sight of things, pulling it from what was thought, to what truly is.

    Moments of sudden laughter that’d hit her out of the blue, when her days were gloomy; the whirling presence that saturated her being with comfort and security each night she stood alone on dark roadsides, and erased her fear.

    No one had reached this deep and stirred her being; which in turn, called forth emotions—the likes that enlarged the heart, to the point it seemed it might burst; not Malik, not even with how much she’d yearned for him, and dreamed dreams within dreams of him, of him being hers, and hers alone.

    She’d praised the nightfall, and the life she lived under the pale light of the moon; for the favors it gave. Then in a switch, cursed the day, every moment its true light remained hidden, while her unbelief battled with the desire to believe again. But it seemed within the realms, which were unseen to her eyes, there, both forces had united and created a single entity, Zalima.

    Mabel, could not contain it, and voiced, “Why did you hide yourself from me?” And though she knew the answer, it helped to speak it, to let out the words. The answer was unneeded, but she wanted a release from the things that swelled inside her chest. The same as she’d seen: figures who stood and stared to the skies, stared across blue waters that stretched to the line where the sky meets land; and then, ushering a scream for the sake of a scream, at unseen demons, spirits, rulers and circumstance. Yet, expecting no retort, the goal was and is the scream, for the sake of a scream.

    “Up until today,” said Zalima, “I could never reach you. My tongue was stilled, and if I spoke, it would spew words that invoked unwant things. So I let my actions speak, and even then, no matter how much I wanted them to speak clearly: that you had someone watching over you; they twisted, and hid.”

    The truth did not spare her feeling, a terrible fiend, and for the first time, Mabel moaned her decisions, and the path it had taken her to.

    “If I knew, things would have being better. For what purpose is my suffering. For what purpose, of what, have I being singled out.”

    “This is not the time for lamentations. I fear in my excitement—the freedom to reveal myself—I’ve brought you here too early, and exposed how much of your life was steered by powers even I, am yet to understand.” Zalima gazed about the dark space, looking for things Mabel knew not. “I must conserve my strength, rise.” She stretched forth an arm. “I don’t have all the answers, but now that my constrains have been broken—though I don’t know how—one question at a time, we’ll unearth the answers you need.”

    Mabel accepted the hand, and rose. “Questions plagued me daily, and recently, more have compounded. But now, it isn’t the questions that worry me, it’s the answers. There are things . . . “—she placed a palm over her belly—“. . .  I have told no one, not Myra. Things that I have seen and heard from within me, which seem to say, this isn’t my life . . . My first life.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “Can a soul come back, after crossing the veil of death?”