Perhaps it was not empty.
Timorously she picked it up and probed inside. Some flour still remained, dry and fine as coral dust. As she drew out a handful and let it sift through her fingers, the idea came—almost as though Shango had whispered it to her in the dark.
The drawing of the double-headed axe. Shango's sign. Had it somehow summoned him that night? Beckoned him forth from the ancient consciousness of Africa, to this puny room?
She stood for a moment and tried again to breathe a prayer. What precisely had Atiba done? How had he drawn the symbol? Her legs trembling, she knelt with a handful of the white powder and carefully began laying down the first line.
It was not as straight as she had wished, nor was its width even, but the flour flowed more readily than she had thought it might. The symbol Atiba had drawn was still etched in her memory. It was simple, powerful, it almost drew itself: the crossed lines, their ends joined, formed two triangles meeting at a common point, and then down the middle the bold stroke that was its handle. The drawing came into form so readily she found herself thinking that Shango must be guiding her hand, urging her on in this uncertain homage to his power.
She stood away and, taking the candle, studied the figure at her feet. The white seemed to undulate in the flickering light. She held the candle a moment longer, then reached out and placed it directly in the center of the double axe-head.
Perhaps it was a gust of wind, but the wick suddenly flared brighter, as though it now drew strength from the symbol it illuminated. The mill, the walls of the room, all glowed in its warm, quivering flame. Was it imagination or was the candle now giving off that same pale radiance she remembered from languorous afternoons long ago in Brazil—the half-light of mist and rainbows that bathed their courtyard in a gossamer sheen when an afternoon storm swept overhead.
She backed away, uneasy and disturbed, groping blindly toward the mill frame. When her touch caught the hard metal, she slipped her hand across the top till her grasp closed on the wand. The stone axe at its tip was strangely warm now, as though it had drawn heat from the iron. Or perhaps it had been from the candle.
She clasped it against her shift, feeling its warmth flow into her. First it filled her breasts with a sensation of whiteness, then it passed downward till it mingled in her thighs. It was a sensation of being fulfilled, brought to completeness, by some essence that flowed out of Shango.
She glanced back at the flickering candle. Now it washed the drawing with a glow of yellow and gold. The candle, too, seemed to be becoming part of her. She wanted to draw its fiery tip into her body, to possess it.