The Blessing Stone (68 page)

“You’re right, we won’t be needing it any more,” she said, slipping the stone into his pocket. “But perhaps someone in the future can use the Blessing Stone and let it help them to find their own inner strength, wisdom and power.”

Matthew kissed Emmeline, then he snapped the reins and got the wagon moving, toward their future in the green valley, toward new hope.

Interim

The Livelys bought land, invested in gold mines and railroads, and grew rich. Matthew became a leader in his community, and in his later years ran for state congress, and was a powerful and commanding figure. When asked what advice he would give to future emigrants taking the Oregon and California trails, Matthew said, “Don’t take shortcuts.” Both he and Emmeline lived to old age and were buried in Livelyville, California.

The Blessing Stone was inherited by their eldest son, Peter, who passed it to his daughter, Mildred, upon her graduation from medical school. Dr. Lively carried the good-luck crystal with her to Africa where she spent thirty years in medical missionary work before returning to the United States to undergo treatment for a rare disease she had contracted while on safari in Uganda. As Mildred Lively had no children, she bequeathed the crystal to the woman who was her dedicated nurse in her final months, a Japanese-American woman named Toki Yoshinaga.

Toki and her family were removed from their San Francisco home after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and sent to live at a place called Manzanar. After the war, the family was forced to sell whatever valuables they had left in order to get back on their feet. The blue crystal fetched a hundred dollars, considered quite a sum in 1948.

The buyer was an accountant named Homer whose hobby was gemology, and when he examined his new purchase at the workbench in his garage, he realized with a thrill that he might have found a new mineral. Subjecting the crystal to its first scientific scrutiny since a Dutchman named Kloppman analyzed it in Amsterdam in the year 1698, Homer found it to be a hard stone, 8.2 on the Mohs’ scale, with a sharp luster and very low cleavage. The blue reminded him of varieties of topaz and tourmaline, but it had a “star” at its center as sapphires sometimes did. Feeling excitement for the first time in many years, he packed the stone along with others and took it to a gemology convention in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he hoped to confirm his new find, with the possibility of naming the new gem after himself— “Homerite” had a nice ring to it. One day into the convention, Homer met a young lady who was
very
interested in precious stones, and he was persuaded to take her back to his hotel room to look at his collection. Unfortunately, the unworldly accountant mistook the intentions of the buxom young lady and, in anticipation of sexual intimacy, suffered a massive coronary.

Homer’s collection lay neglected in the garage by his widow until, deciding to move to a retirement village in Florida, she sold the “whole worthless lot” to a free spirit named Sunbeam, who made beaded jewelry and antiestablishment paraphernalia for the head shops on Hollywood Boulevard, which was how, in 1969, the Blessing Stone ended up in a place called Woodstock, wired into the handle of a marijuana roach clip owned by a hippy named Argyle. After Argyle’s death in an undeclared war in Southeast Asia, his sister went through his possessions and, finding the clip, cut the thin wires to set the blue crystal free. Thinking the stone nothing more than a piece of glass, she gave it to her eight-year-old daughter who, using aluminum foil and glue, made a crown of it for one of her dolls.

When the little girl came of college age and moved out of the house, she donated all her old toys to the Salvation Army, where the blue crystal was rescued by a woman who regularly scoured thrift shops and rummage sales for items of worth that were overlooked by less keen eyes—in her opinion, anyway. She saw possibilities in the crystal, for she was a New Age believer, and felt definite vibes when she clasped it.

And thus the blue stone that had sailed through galaxies and nebulae to land on a primordial Earth—a cosmic crystal that had given a protohuman named Tall One the wisdom to know when to lead her people from danger, that had comforted Laliari, and enlightened Avram, and bestowed Lady Amelia with faith, and had given Mother Winifred the courage to stand up to an abbot’s order, and Katharina the hope to search for her father, and channeled Brigitte Bellefontaine’s buried passion into practical use, and finally made Matthew Lively the master of his own destiny—thus did this blessing stone come to reside in a small shop in a California beach community. It sits today in the window in an unpretentious display of healing crystals, Tarot cards, and incense. If you do not walk by too fast, or are not too distracted by your Palm Pilot or newspaper or cell phone, you will see it.

And if you feel you need to find your inner strength, or courage, or wisdom, go inside the shop, look at the stone, hold it in your hand, and see what it tells you. The proprietor is willing to sell it at a reasonable price…to the right person.

T
HE
B
LESSING
S
TONE

1. What do you think of the time periods the author chose to write about in
   The Blessing Stone?
   Were there any you liked more than others? Were there any you would have liked to see? Which came the most alive for you?
   
2. In Tall One’s story, there is no actual dialogue. Did you notice this? Were the characters’ motivations and intentions still clearly delineated?
   
3. What aspects of the ancient Middle Eastern section do you think still have resonance today?
   
4. Have your ideas about fate and destiny changed after reading this book? If so, how? If not, why?
   
5. What do you think the author is trying to say about superstitions and the power we give objects?
   
6. Did any historical fact or idea in
   The Blessing Stone
   surprise you? If so, how?
   
7. Which character in
   The Blessing Stone
   did you find the most heroic? The most villainous?
   
8. The author compresses time in the “interludes.” How did the use of compressed time work for you in the story?
   
9. How did the book make you think about the history of seemingly ordinary objects? For more reading group suggestions visit
   www.stmartins.com
   

For more reading group suggestions visit
www.stmartins.com