The Fire Necklace

“Grandpa! Grandpa! Tell us a bedtime story!” Four little faces eagerly peered up at him from the floor. He leaned back a little in his easy chair and reached for a glass of wine sitting on an end table.

“Kids, it’s time for bed.” Their mother stood in the doorway, hands on her hips.

“But Mom, there’s no school tomorrow.” The little bodies sitting cross-legged on the floor swiveled around to give their mother a pleading look.

“It’s Saturday and we have church on Sunday.”

“Oh, just a quick little story. I’ll keep it short.” A little sparkle in their grandpa’s eye said otherwise.

“Fine, ten minutes. Then it’s bedtime.” The kids swiveled back around, eyes glued to their grandpa.

“Now, which one to tell you…”

A cacophony of shrill voices filled the air.

“The one about the princess.”

“We heard that one last week.”

“The one about the shipwreck and the treasure.”

“Can we hear about…”

He raised his hands to silence them. “I’ll tell you one you’ve never heard.” He cleared his throat and took a large sip of wine to wet his palate. “This one is called The Fire Necklace.”

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It begins almost two hundred years ago in a far-away land. There lived a poor young man who worked as a laborer mining silver. Everyday, he shouldered his pick-axe and walked through the little town in which he lived on his way to the mine. Everyday, he passed a house on a hill in which the owner of the mine lived. The owner had a beautiful daughter whom some called the most beautiful girl in all the land. Every morning, she would lean out her bedroom window as the miners passed by on the road below. She would wave kindly at the men, but would always smile at one particular miner. And every morning, the poor young miner would gaze up at her as she smiled at him.

They were in love and were seeing each other in secret, as her father would never allow a man of such little money to court his daughter. Her father was a callused man whose only love was money. He worked his miners hard, from sun up to sun down, every day except on Sundays. If it were not for the priest at the village’s church condemning work on Sundays, the mine owner would have worked his men that day too. Everyone in the village attended the Sunday Mass, no matter their class. It was on these Sunday afternoons that the mine owner’s daughter would briefly steal away to the church’s rose garden to talk to the young man. She was nothing like her father as she was a kind and gentle soul. They fell in love and for years, they courted in secret.

But one spring day the mine owner announced that his daughter’s hand would be given away in marriage on this year’s summer solstice. A large party would be hosted and all the eligible suitors would be invited. Her father declared, however, that she would only marry the man who could present the most remarkable gift.

The next day, the young miner shouldered his axe and trudged off to work. As he passed the house, there was his sweetheart leaning out the window. But she was not smiling; she was sobbing and she turned away from the window as the young miner passed by. His heart was broken; he knew he would never be able to present to her father anything of enough value in order to win her hand. The woman he loved would be married off to someone else.

As he walked to work, thoughts filled his head. Perhaps she could run away and marry him? His mind wandered and he paused to rest at the base of a rocky hill. A recent landslide had sloughed off boulders to reveal fresh dirt and rocks below. It was there, with the first glint of morning sun, that a sparkle in the rocks caught his attention. What was that? He could not stop to climb the hill and investigate. That would cause him to be late and he would lose his earnings for the day. But he made note of where he saw that sparkle and planned to return after work.

It was hard labor toiling away in the mine, and it seemed as if that day stretched on forever. By dusk, he was exhausted and didn’t know if he had the strength to go see what that sparkle was on the hill face. Could it be a fresh vein of silver to mine?

After he arrived home and ate his meager dinner, he lit a lantern and clambered up the hill face in the dark. It was a full moon and the sky was blanketed in stars. There was enough light for him to see but he could not find the spot that had sparkled earlier in the day. Swinging the lantern back and forth, he became discouraged until he saw it. Like an ember’s spark sent up from a fire, there was a little red flash in the dirt. He hung his lantern on an exposed tree root and, crouching down, took a knife from his pocket. He began to dig in the loose rocks, freeing red chucks from them. Cleaning these on his shirtsleeve, he realized they were pretty stones. He slipped a few in his pocket and returned home to examine them.

There, he rinsed them with water and their beauty slowly began to show. They were blood red and gorgeous, catching the candlelight and scattering it, almost glowing like embers of a fire. He had heard stories of sparkling stones like these in his childhood. It was told that these stones had rained down from the sky in fire on the back of a phoenix. They were red fire opals, a stone rare in this region, and worth a handsome sum. A glimmer of hope lit within him. Just a handful of these stones would be payment enough to win his sweetheart’s hand in marriage.

And so everyday after mining, the young man returned to the hill face in the dark and dug out stones by lantern light. Over the next couple months, he accumulated many stones of varying sizes, including some exceptionally large opals. Amongst the red opals, he found different ones, almost as clear as water itself, but still with the sparkle of dazzling colors inside them. Once he had mined a box full, he traveled to a nearby village to have them cut and polished, further increasing their value. He sold some to purchase silver and turquoise and went to an old silversmith to turn them into fine jewelry.

The old woman hammered the silver into delicate fanned wings with a fire opal at each tip. A large red stone was placed in the center, creating the body of a phoenix. Behind it, like the blue of the sky, she put a large piece of turquoise. She then strung turquoise beads on a braided silver chain and between each bead, she hung the clear opals, which were cut and polished like raindrops. Lastly, she covered the beak, eye, and claws of the phoenix in gold. It was an exquisite necklace to behold.

By the time the summer solstice arrived, the young man had mined a large amount of opals, storing them in an unassuming wooden box beneath a loose floorboard in his humble home. That evening, the mine owner held a large party for his daughter’s hand in marriage. The wealthy eligible men from many towns were there, including bankers, doctors, and even a general in the army. They were finely dressed and laid before the mine owner their affluent offerings for his daughter’s hand. They presented chests of gold and silver, proposed political appointments in the government, and promised large tracks of prime land. But the mine owner was not impressed, for these things he already possessed or could easily acquire with his vast wealth. He wanted something more.

Eventually, the line of suitors dwindled until, at last, the young miner stood before the owner. While dressed in his Sunday best, the young miner looked rather worn and ragged compared to the more finely garbed suitors. His sweetheart looked at him longingly and with such sadness as he laid the wooden box at her father’s feet. She knew that, whatever it contained, it would not be enough to change her father’s heart. He would not let her marry the man she loved. The mine owner laughed as he reached down to open the box, but fell silent when he flipped up the lid. Inside were the opals that the young man had spent months procuring. The mine owner gasped as he stared at the stones. They shimmered in the light, glimmering, like fire throwing sparks across the room. Even the clear ones dazzled like fresh water on a sunny day. The mine owner knew what they were. Cut and polished as these, he understood they were rare, unique, and worth a fortune. He looked up at the young man and nodded. Then from his pocket, the young miner drew the necklace and presented it to his sweetheart. She smiled, and pulling back her hair, he clasped it around her neck. It was a beautiful engagement gift for an even more beautiful woman.

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“What happened next grandpa?” The little children’s eyes were wide with excitement. Their mother stood in the doorway, tapping her wrist.

“Well, it’s getting to be near your bedtime…”

“Grandpa…”

“Okay, I’ll make it short. The mine owner was so enthralled with the opals that he let his daughter marry the young miner. The general became angry and threatened to send the army after the two young lovers. They escaped. They made their way through the jungle and the desert, over snowy mountains and vast oceans. Eventually they lived happily ever after.”

“Where is the necklace now?” Their mother again tapped her wrist and mouthed the word “BEDTIME.”

“Well, that’s a story for another day. But it did come into my possession as a gift to win the heart of the woman I wanted to marry. And I think I might even have a drawing of it.”

He looked over at his wife, who was curled up on the couch reading a book, and smiled. He reached for a small bound journal sitting on the end table next to him. He opened it, and leafing through the pages, found the one he wanted. He turned it around for the children to see; they all scooted closer to get a better look. A pencil sketch, with little bits of color added, sprawled across the page. It was just as he described it: a phoenix necklace of ornate silver and stone. Their eyes widened even further in wonder. He smiled and closed the book.

“Okay, off to bed now. Listen to your mother.”

Grumbles rippled through the little group as they got up and trudged down the hall to where their mother was standing at the bathroom door, toothbrushes in hand. Their grandmother sighed and put down the book that she was reading.

“That was a far-fetched story you just told them.”

He gave his wife a side-ways look. “Everything’s better with a backstory.

“None of that was true. We went down to Padre Island and then crossed over into Matamoros. You bought the necklace there and it rode home in our station wagon wrapped in newspaper.”

“And?”

“We were married for twenty years and already had five kids when you gave it to me.”

“So? I just jazzed the story up a bit. A little embellishment never hurt anyone.”

“You embellish a lot.”

“Sometimes I don’t.”

She shook her head. The kids were back to say goodnight to their grandparents. After giving grandma a good night kiss on the cheek, they hopped up on grandpa’s lap, asking what the next story would be.

“Ah, next time, I will tell you of the two rich sisters who hid vast amounts of treasure in a place where no one would ever think to look.”

“Tell us! Tell us!” Their eyes widened again in anticipation.

“Next time.”

He pointed to a picture on the wall. It was a simple little painting of a white clapboard church set in an idyllic countryside. Hammered into the bottom piece of its wooden frame were nails from which an assortment of keys hung. Everyone put keys here for easy access. There were car keys, house keys, and keys to the various barns and sheds on the property. There were even some keys that, what they opened, no one knew. They had been hanging there for a long time and were, at this point, more decoration than anything useful.

“Remember,” he said, “You will find greatest treasure where Faith and Hope abide forever.” He nodded, gave each of the grandchildren a kiss on the forehead, and sent them off to bed.

His wife looked up at him, rolled her eyes, and went back to reading her book.

He sipped the last of his wine and paged through his journal, muttering almost to himself.

“Sometimes I tell true stories.”

Words found and used in this story: opal, jungle, phoenix, lantern, sob, fortune, solstice, claws, jazz

I dropped an Easter Egg to another of my stories at the end of this one. Check out my micro-fiction story Grandpa's Cemetery Secret to read more.