Centuries before whites settled in Arkansas, the native people considered the Ouachita Mountains sacred. Many different tribes came to the natural mineral springs in the “Valley of the Mists” to drink and bathe in the healing waters, putting aside their differences temporarily to enjoy this mystical spot in peace.
Driving through the valley, Miranda could easily understand why her father’s older brother had made his home here. His real name was Bradaigh, which meant
“spirited” in Gaelic, but she’d always called him Uncle Bright because as a young child she’d seen a halo of light glowing around his head. People described Bradaigh Malone as an old hippie, a loner, a hermit. White hair hung below his shoulders and his beard cascaded down his chest. Beneath shaggy eyebrows, piercing blue eyes shone like beacons. He walked with a limp—the legacy of an injury sustained in Vietnam—and used a tall staff he’d carved from an ash branch to support himself.
Miranda drove across a narrow bridge that arched over a stream, then climbed a dirt road up a seemingly endless hill to her uncle’s house. She hadn’t been here since before her father became ill, seven years ago; the road had deteriorated significantly since then. It must be impossible to get in or out during the winter, she thought. He probably likes it that way.
Uncle Bright was weeding his vegetable garden when she pulled up in front of the house. He waved and stood up slowly. Omar, his mixed lab-golden retriever, raced to greet her by sticking his nose in her crotch.
“How was your trip, Sunshine?” her uncle asked. He’d nicknamed her Sunshine because he said she lit up his life.
“Long,” Miranda answered, hugging him with one arm while she tried unsuccessfully to fend off the friendly dog. “It’s still hard for this New England girl to get used to such big states.”
“It still seems strange to me sometimes, too. But then, I hardly ever go anyplace.”
He reached for his staff, which he’d propped against the garden fence. “Are you hungry?”
“Very.”
“C’mon in, then. I’ll get dinner together.”
Miranda fetched her suitcase from the car and followed her uncle into the house.
While he busied himself in the kitchen, she climbed up a ladder to a loft guestroom and unpacked a few things. The room looked the same as she remembered it: a double bed with pine cone finials and a patchwork quilt, a small dresser, a nightstand holding an old oil lamp that had been converted to electricity, and about a zillion crystals.
A large chunk of smoky quartz sat on the dresser; an amethyst cluster rested on the nightstand. More crystals perched on the windowsill, twinkling in the late afternoon sun.
They reminded her of the crystals in the secret pyramid she’d visited with Lancelot Lucas. That memory triggered a pleasant tingling between her legs. I’ll think about that later, she told herself, pushing the images aside . She washed her face and brushed her hair, then went back downstairs to join her uncle.
More crystals adorned Uncle Bright’s living room and kitchen. Stones of various sizes, shapes, and colors rested on every surface. Clear quartz pillars as big as half-gallon milk cartons stood like sentries on the mantel. A bowling ball-sized sphere shone on the coffee table. The house seemed to buzz with their energy. He doesn’t think of them as pretty baubles, she reminded herself, they’re his extended family.
“We’re having roast chicken, yellow squash, green beans, and salad. Hope that’s okay,” Uncle Bright said. “You get to sample my first tomatoes of the summer.”
“Sounds great,” she answered, trying not to picture the capon they were about to eat walking around in the yard this morning. “How can I help?”
“You can set the table.”
Miranda laid out placemats, silverware, plates, and glasses. In her uncle’s sideboard she found a stash of candles. On impulse, she fitted two beeswax tapers into brass holders and placed them on the table. Then she helped carry platters and bowls brimming with food to the dining room.
Omar took up residence beside Uncle Bright’s chair, hoping for a handout. His tail beat a steady rhythm, like a metronome, on the pine floor.
“I want to hear all about your travels,” her uncle said as he spooned homegrown vegetables onto their plates.
“So far this trip has been everything and nothing that I’d expected.”
She recounted her visits to the usual tourist sites—Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert—leaving out potentially eyebrow-raising segments. As she filled Uncle Bright in on her journey and the interesting people she’d met, she considered ways to explain her relationship with Eli. I’m not even sure about it myself, she had to admit. Maybe I’ll save that discussion for another time.
When she’d finished her travelogue, he asked, “How’s everyone back home?”
Miranda took a second helping of chicken. “Okay, I guess,” feeling herself stiffen.
“Are you getting along any better with your mom and Kelly, now that Danny’s gone?”
While her father was sick, Uncle Bright came back to Salem several times to visit.
He’d been a great help to her, especially at the end. A lot more help than my mother and sister, she thought bitterly. “I really haven’t seen much of them since the funeral,” she answered.
“You know, Sunshine, people cope with grief in different ways.”
“I doubt Mom really cares he’s gone. She’s got her new husband now. And Kelly’s such a self-centered brat, she never thinks of anyone but herself.”
She knew if she looked at him, his eyes would hold nothing but understanding.
But she kept her gaze focused on her dinner. She ate some squash, then a bite of salad.
“These tomatoes are delicious,” she said, trying to change the subject.
Her uncle, however, wasn’t ready to let it go yet. “Holding a grudge dims your own radiance. Anger and resentment are like grime coating a light bulb. Forgiveness washes away that dirt so the light can shine brightly again.”
“I know, I know. A grief counselor told me holding on to grievances is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die.”
“That’s a pretty good analogy.” He smiled and patted her hand. “Never forget, Sunshine, that you are a light bearer. You have a job to do: to shine the light of love into the darkness of fear. Fear, hatred, and anger deplete our vitality. Love keeps us alive.”
“Easier said than done.”
“All you have to do is remember the good things about a person. Try to see what’s luminous in them, rather than dwelling on what you don’t like.”
“All?” Miranda smiled back at him. “After you first told me I was a light bearer, when I was just a little girl, I went around for days pointing a flashlight at people and telling them to go here or there. I thought that’s what ‘lighting the way’ meant. It seemed the most wonderful job anyone could possibly have.”
“And so it is. But now you know the only way to guide others is by example.”
Lying in bed that night, Miranda contemplated what her uncle had said: “Love keeps us alive.” She remembered how devastated her father had been when her mother left him, how all the joy drained out of him. Not long afterwards, he’d been diagnosed with cancer.
Was there a connection? she wondered. The possibility really pissed her off. If it’s true, Mom didn’t just divorce Dad — she killed him.
She tried to move beyond the anger, as Uncle Bright recommended, and focus on good things about her mother. Okay, she brought me into the world, Miranda acknowledged grudgingly. She searched for positive memories and surprisingly came up with quite a few: shopping for new school clothes, hunting for seashells at the beach, finger-painting together and crayoning in coloring books. Mom encouraged my artistic talent. The admission improved her attitude slightly. And she never told me my only role in life was to be someone’s wife or mother.
That thought segued into thoughts about Eli. She contemplated her father’s premonition, a few days before he died: “Your future husband will hold the world in the palm of his hand.” And she thought of Eli’s tattoo of Mother Earth. Is he really the one? What would Dad think of him?
In her mind’s eye, she saw the tattoo on Eli’s palm and imagined it caressing her.
She recalled an afternoon at Sybil’s place, lying together on the soft grass in a clearing in the woods, surrounded by wildflowers and birdsong. Sunshine warmed their naked bodies. Eli’s strong hands stroked her with exquisite slowness, savoring every inch of her.
She remembered the sweet fragrance of honeysuckle and the fresh, clean scent of the sun-kissed grass. They provided the background for a stronger, headier aroma: the smell of Eli’s hot skin. The slight saltiness of his sweat and the rich musk of his arousal intoxicated her. She pressed her cheek against his chest, inhaling his maleness as his hands slid up the insides of her thighs. Running her tongue along his collarbone, the hollow at the base of his neck, she tasted the tanginess of his rising passion.
Miranda sighed as a delicious heat spread through her groin. She felt herself softening, melting like warm syrup. Pretending her fingers were his, she ran them along her seam and played with her clit. She imagined the head of his cock rubbing the swollen lips of her pussy. As she plunged a finger into her opening, she fantasized him sliding inside, his hard shaft filling her, and she came in a blaze of colored lights that tickled her skin like Fourth of July sparklers.
The air felt humid and close as Miranda and Uncle Bright hiked to his favorite crystal field. A large vein of high-grade quartz ran through his forty acres, near enough to the surface that he could harvest stones with relatively little effort. He earned a modest living gathering them from this site and selling them to gem and mineral shops, new age stores, museums, and collectors around the country.
“Some of the finest crystals in the world are right in my back yard,” he’d proudly explained the first time he took her digging with him, more than twenty years ago. “Only Brazil rivals Arkansas as a source for quality quartz crystals.”
Periodically, he plowed up a section of his land to unearth buried crystals. Each time he did, hundreds of tiny clear stones emerged from the beds where they’d lain since prehistoric times. The bigger, more valuable ones, however, nestled deeper in the ground—those he had to dig out with a shovel or dislodge with a crowbar.
The night’s rain had washed the area clean, making it easier to spot crystals lying about on the ground. As a child, Miranda thought the sparkling stones were fallen stars.
They still amazed her, the way they peeked out of the soil as if they’d been planted there.
Well, maybe they had. Her uncle once told her that millennia ago, beings from other galaxies had programmed certain types of crystals with ancient wisdom, then seeded the Earth with them, hoping one day the knowledge would benefit humans. She didn’t really believe him, but the idea intrigued her.
And anyway, who knew?
As Miranda slogged across the field, the damp soil sucked at her feet, threatening to pull off the too-big rubber boots he’d loaned her. Now and again she bent down, plucked a crystal from the dirt, and dropped it in the bucket she carried. Omar bounded ahead of her, flicking up mud with his big paws.
“It’s amazing how perfect these are,” she said, holding a crystal up to the sun. “If you didn’t know better, you’d think they were cut and polished like diamonds to form such smooth, symmetrical sides and points.”
“I’ve found some diamonds here, too, you know,” Uncle Bright said, poking the soil with his carved staff. “Keep your eyes open, Sunshine—you could stumble upon a gem fine enough to make you a rich woman.”
Although the occasional diamond he discovered might garner more money than the other stones, Miranda knew the quartz crystals were his true loves. His house testified to that. He even kept a crystal in the glove compartment of his truck and carried one he called his “companion” in his pocket.
“Let’s try here.” Uncle Bright jabbed his shovel into the soft earth. As if on command, Omar began digging beside him.
She laughed, watching the dog earnestly attack the ground. “What a great helper you’ve got.”
“That he is. He earns his keep.”
Miranda raked the loose soil, separating the stones from the dirt. She’d nearly filled her bucket when Omar turned up a crystal half the size of her hand. She picked it up and wiped it on her jeans.
“Oh, look at this one,” she said, handing it to Uncle Bright. “It’s a beauty, don’t you think?”
He smiled and passed it back to her. “I think that one has your name on it.”
As she gazed at it, she saw images moving within the crystal. How strange, she thought. Looking closer, she could distinguish a horse-drawn carriage with two men and a woman in it. A second carriage bearing three male passengers followed behind the first one. In the background, a dark man rode a rearing horse. Watching them, she felt an inexplicable sense of foreboding and danger. What the hell? Then just as suddenly as the images had appeared, they vanished.
Miranda shook her head to clear it and closed her fingers around the crystal.
Instead of dropping it into the bucket with the others, she slipped the crystal into her pocket.