The Blessing Stone by Barbara Wood Read Free Book Online

darkness.
    And then she saw it, a flash of reflected moonlight. Water! Clear and blue, pooled at the base of one of the flowers. But when she reached out for it she found that the water was hard and not a small puddle at all. Scooping it up in her hand, she puzzled over the chunk of blue water that was matted with the dried leaves of the foxglove plant. How could water be solid? And yet it had to be water for it was transparent and smooth and looked as if it might at any moment be liquid.
    She carried the stone, created three million years earlier out of a meteorite, back to Old Mother and, cradling the elderly female in her arms, gently slipped the smooth stone between her parched lips. Old Mother immediately began to suck, saliva appearing at the corners of her mouth, so Tall One knew that the water had turned to liquid again.
    After a moment, however, to her surprise, the crystal slipped out from Old Mother’s lips and when Tall One caught it she saw that the water was still solid. But now she could see it more clearly for the old female’s tongue had cleaned the stone of its vegetative debris.
    The crystal fit snugly in Tall One’s palm, the way an egg would lie in a nest, and it was smooth like an egg, but with a watery surface that shot back the moon’s light the way a lake or a stream did. When she turned it over and then held it up between two fingers, she saw deeper blues at its heart, and then deeper still something white and sharp and glinting.
    A sigh from Old Mother brought Tall One’s attention back from the crystal. She saw in amazement that Old Mother’s lips had turned from blue to pink and that she was breathing more easily. A moment later Old Mother opened her eyes and she smiled. Then she sat up and touched her withered old breast in wonder. The chest pain was gone.
    Together they stared at the transparent stone. Unaware of the curative powers of the digitalis in the plant, they believed it was the water in the stone that had saved her.
    When they caught up with the Family at dawn, the others looked up from their foraging with mild curiosity, Tall One and Old Mother having already begun to recede from their memories. By gestures and limited words, Old Mother explained how the water-stone had brought her back from death and when Tall One passed the stone around to the thirsty members, they took turns sucking on it until they salivated. For a while, thirst was slaked and, for a while, everyone looked on Tall One with wonder and a little fear.
     
    She came upon the stranger by accident. She had been scavenging in the tall foliage that fringed the western lake for salamander eggs when she heard him at the water’s edge. She had never seen him before—a tall youth with broad shoulders and muscular thighs—and as she spied on him she wondered where he had come from.
    The Family had arrived at the lake the day before to find the water covered with ash and all the fish dead and rotting. Foraging for turtle and reptile eggs had proven fruitless, and the vegetation along the shore was so choked with volcanic ash that roots had come up black and inedible. Bird life had left so there were no nests filled with the good eating of crane and pelican eggs. There was only a small flock of ducks struggling for survival among the withered cattails and reeds. All able-bodied family members had dispersed in a wide area in search of food while the elderly and children remained at a camp on a rocky ledge that was relatively safe from predators. Tall One had spotted a small group of zebras kneeling at the water’s edge, trying to drink through the ash, when she had espied the young stranger. He was doing a puzzling thing.
    While holding a long strip of animal sinew, looped and fitted with a stone, with his other hand he tossed a pebble onto the water, causing the mallards to suddenly take flight. Then the stranger swung the sinew over his head and let loose the stone. Before Tall One’s astonished eyes, the stone shot