Chapter 1
Mary Linda hated her brother. He hadn’t been born yet and still she wanted him dead. Even though she was isolated from everything and everyone, she would rather play with the goats then have this brother be born. She knew he was evil. She just knew it.
She was a lonely child, but not particularly prone to fantasy or anger. These feelings about her future sibling were very unlike her.
In her entire five years of life she hadn’t played with another child because living here in the Sierra Nevada Mountains away from everyone had essentially isolated her from the outside world. She had Barkley, her old dog, but he didn’t talk much and as he’d gotten older, he didn’t play much either. He didn’t even move much for that matter. In the summer, he laid in the sun and the winter found him curled up on the hearth in front of the ever-present fire.
They raised chickens, goats and lambs but they were not pets, they were food. “We don’t play with food,” she was often told.
They lived on a huge piece of land in the mountains where there were lots of trees, flowers, and plants, but not many people. She knew her parents preferred it that way. They didn’t like people very much. They only went into town when they had to buy groceries or things they couldn’t grow or create themselves. She was never allowed to go.
As long as she didn’t get lost, no one minded if she walked the fields or forests. This day, however, while chasing a butterfly, she wandered much further than she ever had before. The trees were taller and the forest growth denser, creating the appearance of dusk instead of midday. The heavy smell of decaying plant life was almost overpowering. Everything felt ancient.
As she wandered, Mary Linda noticed how still this part of the forest was. There were no bird songs, no squirrels scurrying about; even the butterfly had vanished. The woodland that was usually so noisy was completely silent.
Mary Linda would have been scared if she had known what being scared was, but in her entire life she had never needed to be frightened, so she wasn’t now. Instead, she continued to explore this new environment.
What sunlight did get through the dense foliage of the antediluvian trees was dispersed as thin rays dancing with speckles of dust. This scattered lighting gave the entire environment the atmosphere of walking through a dream where nothing has substance and can be changed with the touch of an outstretched finger.
Mary Linda put her hand into one of these rays of light and watched as it created a kaleidoscope of colors in the palm of her hand. Even she knew that was a bit weird. She had put her hand into many a sunbeam but her hand had never become a rainbow. Taking her hand away, she allowed the beam to follow its natural trajectory to see what would happen when it illuminated the ground. A diamond! she thought. This was no ordinary “diamond.” It was clear, with many faceted sides that reflected the sunbeam and scattered the light. On closer examination, she observed a small fissure in the mineral that produced multiple rainbows within its depth.
How pretty, she thought as she plucked the glowing rock from the earth and ran home to show it to her mother.
