Bible Quotes in Crystal Land
Chapter 3 - Quartz Crystal

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Chapter 3

Quartz Crystal

A Young Woman of the Gerais

Once Edvar and his group were gone, Júlia showed Cristina the house and said that the two of them would room together. The bedroom had a wardrobe closet and two separate beds, with a small table in between, on top of which were some objects, including two very beautiful crystal stones, a larger one weighing some five kilograms and a smaller one, whose weight perhaps did not surpass three hundred grams. Cristina took the smaller crystal in her hand and stared admiringly at it.

“Do you like it?” Júlia asked and, when Cristina nodded, told her, “Then, you can keep it.”

“There are a lot of crystals here in your house,” Cristina remarked, after thanking Júlia and putting the gift in her purse. “I noticed that there is at least one stone in each room in the house, each one prettier than the other.”

“They go back to the time when my father would mine for them.”

Cristina asked Júlia to show her the farm around the main house and the two of them went by the workers’ houses. The children would ask for their blessing and Cristina talked to some of them and noticed that they were very shy.

They kept walking towards Paul ’s Creek, some three hundred yards down from the house, on the edge of the foothills. Júlia told her this was one of many brooks and streams on the farm. The water was crystal-clear, although there was not much of it at this time of the year. In fact, there was so little that it was possible to ford the creek on foot, stepping on rocky reefs which formed a kind of natural barrier. Upstream, there was a major pool of water, with streams trickling through depressions and clefts in the reefs, coming together downstream and eventually forming a ten-meter-high waterfall. The two young women sat by the side of the creek, very close to the waterfall, and talked, although Júlia was rather shy and didn’t say much. In a moment of silence between them, Cristina thought about her presence here, some five hundred kilometers from her family, from João, from her friends, her work, the university, in short, from her life. She was in a far-off, isolated place, in a simple, almost poor environment. Here she was, driven by what had happened to her and by a faith and a power she had never known before.

“I would like to leave here,” said Júlia, interrupting her thoughts, “and go to Montes Claros, Belo Horizonte, São Paulo...”

“Why?”

“Because things don’t move here. Nothing happens; every day is the same. Don’t get me wrong, I like the peace and quiet here, but sometimes it gets to you, all day, every day, just cattle and farming, and land, you know what I mean? It sorts of gets me mad, with all due respect.”

...

“Sometimes I miss all the action,” she went on, “and when this happens, I just think of something to do. I go to Itacambira, Bocaiúva, Montes Claros, taking advantage when my dad goes to one of those places. If many days go by, I find some excuse —like saying I have a headache or something, so that I have to go to the doctor —but that’s a secret just between the two of us, okay?”

“Sure, don’t worry. Then, your dad does take you?”

“Sometimes he does, sometimes he don’t. If I really want to go, I just ride a horse as far as Itacambira.”

“On horseback? That far and alone, on horseback?”

“There is a trail just for horses, which is much shorter. I only take about two and a half hours,” Júlia answered, bursting with pride.

The two young women kept talking about rural and city life. Then, Júlia, more at ease now, surprised Cristina by confiding in her. “Let me tell you something. Once I was in Montes Claros, just thinking abou t life: Why all this rat race, anyway? I thought that, deep inside, it was all about money and work.”

“Were you thinking about life’s overriding purpose?” Cristina replied in admiration, for Júlia, had basic formal schooling and seemed a plain kind of person. She thought people like her didn’t ask existential questions.

“I ain’t sure if that was it or not. I just kept thinkin’ about the rat race and all, and I figured it was all about money and work, see what I mean?”

“Did you think there must be another reason for life?”

“I guess so, but there ain’t, is there? Just look at it this way: We run like heck after money, then we rest on the weekends, and on Monday morning, we start all over again.”

The conversation turned to young men, boyfriends, love. Cristina was surprised by another piece of information from the young woman: although she had had some boyfriends, she had never fallen in love.

“Doesn’t your heart race at the thought of any of them?” Júlia said no. “Haven’t you ever felt up in the clouds with any of these relationships?” Again she said no. “Didn’t you ever feel a bridge linking your heart to that of someone else?” Júlia again lowered her head and said no. “Do you grasp what I am saying?”

“Of course. Look here, it ain’t ‘cause we live out here in the farm that we don’t know what love is, come on.”

“I apologize; I didn’t mean to belittle you. But didn’t you ever love anyone?”

Júlia, still keeping her head low, replied, “No, I never felt it.”

“ Oh, that’s too bad.”

“Yet, I don’t miss it,” she insisted, raising her head.

“You don’t?”

“No. Let me tell you something, I ain’t sure if I should, it’s a secret.”

“About this topic?”

“Yes, but swear you won’t tell anyone?”

“I swear!”

“The thing is, I’ve thought about it, and I don’t think I’ll ever feel it.”

“Never feel it?! And how do you know that you won’t ever feel it?”

“I know. People know.”

...

First Expression of Power

Cristina suggested they go for a walk. They went to the left of the brook, where there was a vegetable garden with several beds. Júlia explained that every worker had his own vegetables for his family’s consumption. On the way back, they came through the orchard, full of fruit trees. Júlia said that the peasants could take what they needed for their families. They also went to a nearby pasture, reserved for cows already with young calves or about to give birth to them. They crossed a gate and stopped, while Júlia answered Cristina’s questions.

“This is like a maternity ward,” she said, showing Cristina the various divisions around the yard and the fruit orchard. “When a cow is about to give birth, she stays here and we help her, if necessary. When the cow and her calf are well, they go to the normal pastures we call mangoes.”

“Mangoes?”

“Yeah,” Júlia laughed, realizing that the visitor associated the name with the mango fruit. “Mango in this case is not the fruit, but the name of a large, fenced-in pasture. There are lots of mangoes here on the farm. Anyway, the work animals stay in two short mangoes.”

Delighted with the cattle, Cristina started walking towards them, despite Júlia’s warnings.

“Don’t go! There are some angry cows in there.”

Yet, she kept walking slowly and started to pat the young calves tenderly. “Come back, Cristina! Come back!” Júlia kept shouting, but Cristina did not seem to hear her. Women and children heard Júlia yelling and came out of their houses to see what was going on. Scared, Júlia called a cowhand, who was on the other side of the pasture, and he came quickly, warning Cristina, “Miss, it’s dangerous to be among these cows.” As she didn’t answer, he galloped closer, on horseback, to give her protection, if necessary. But it wasn’t. She walked in the middle of the cattle herd and the cows did nothing. After a while, followed by the cowhand, she came back towards Júlia who, very concerned, told her, “You don’t know how dangerous that was. All cows get upset when they have a newborn calf. I don’t know how come none of them attacked you.”

“I didn’t know it was dangerous, understand?”

“You were lucky,” Júlia said.

“You can’t take chances like that,” the cowhand warned her.

In the yard, the two young women sat on the back of an oxcart and were soon surrounded by women and children —and they took part in a lively conversation.

Shortly after four in the afternoon, some field hands started to arrive, including Júlia’s two brothers —Gilton, the eldest, and Gilberto, who was older than Júlia. After the introductions, everyone sat around, on tree logs, stones, tires, and all sorts of makeshift seats. The spontaneous visitor was the center of all attention. Júlia described what had happened with the cows and calves. Everybody thought it was funny and admired Cristina for it.

“She even played with them,” Júlia added.

...

Some people left and others joined the group. The men left to clean up and bathe, at home or in Paul ’s Creek. After a while, the group was reduced to a few people, all standing, and among them there was a field hand, who had been among the first to arrive. He hadn’t said a word and stared at Cristina the whole time, in loving admiration, like a child staring at a toy.

In late afternoon, around six o’clock, the group broke up and everyone went home to dinner.

“Did you see how Juca kept staring at you?” Júlia asked.

“I did. He’s shy, isn’t he? He seemed to be admiring what I was saying.”

“I think it’s a lot more than that.”

...

Night fell and almost everybody headed for home, except for some who got together to play cards and others who just continued the conversation. From one of the houses came the sounds of a guitar and viola playing country music. Since there was no electricity, light was provided by kerosene and diesel oil lamps.

Jeremias joined his family in the living room, as he did informally every evening, along with one or two farmhands. Cristina was the center of attention, and they got to know more about her life, her interest in research, and her interest in the farm. When asked about the nature of her research, she answered sincerely, “I still don’t know exactly. It could be about water, the creeks and brooks, the head waters, the air, the soil, their components, or fertility; it could even be about crystal mining, understand? First of all, I would like to...”

At that moment, Juca, who had not come back to the yard after supper, entered with another worker, interrupting Cristina’s explanation. Everyone’s attention turned to how Juca was all dressed up, wearing a brand-new pair of boots that sounded neck, neck, neck as he walked, blue jeans, and a shirt with a huge red dragon on the back. His shiny hair was carefully groomed. In short, his appearance contrasted sharply with everybody else’s simple attire. The two newly-arrived field hands sat down on available chairs.

At first, Juca did not look at anyone, keeping his head slightly down and turned sideways, staring fixedly at something on the floor. He seemed both happy and shy.

“ Looks like you’re goin’ out somewhere, all spruced up in them fancy clothes,” Júlia needled him, with an ironic smile.

“Folks around here wear them Sunday-morning rags only when they go into town lookin’ for a job,” Gilberto joined his sister.

“I’d dress up fancy like that, if I was goin’ to a bank to borrow some money,” Gilton, the other brother, added with a mocking smile.

All these joking comments only made Juca shyer and quieter. To break the ice, Cristina resumed her story, “As I was saying, first I’d like to learn about the farm. Then, I’ll decide what to do, understand?”

When she said that she didn’t know how to ride a horse, Jeremias replied that this, then, would be the first order of business.

“I’ll teach you,” Júlia offered. “And I’ll also show you the mango groves, the plantations, the cattle herds. As regards crystal mining, I can only show you the nearby ore because I, myself, don’t know all of them and don’t understand much about crystals. Would that be enough?”

“More than enough, that would be just great. To know exactly what research to do I need to know the whole farm, understand?”

Jeremias said that the two of them would need help from Edu, short for Eduardo, who was Jeremias’s right-hand man. In fact, he sent immediately for Edu and, while waiting for him, they all proceeded with the conversation, asking Cristina about various topics. They found it rather odd that she didn’t know exactly what kind of research she was interested in carrying out.

Juca never said a word but paid close attention to everything, and, whenever Cristina spoke, he would stare intently at her, with a mix of tenderness, admiration, and enchantment. Everyone noticed it, although nobody said anything.

Edu was a soft-spoken and easy-going mature man, born in the region, where he had lived most of his life. He knew all the land around better than anybody else.

“ Edu,” Jeremias started, as soon as he arrived, “you will assist Júlia and this young lady here, who wants to see the farm, the mining. Júlia will show her the plantations and the mango groves, and you show her the rest.”

“She wants to see the whole farm?” Edu seemed surprised.

“Is there a problem?” Cristina asked.

“Well! Lengthwise, this farm is about two leagues, over twelve kilometers, and some of the mining is pretty far from here,” Edu explained.

“Over ninety percent of it doesn’t add up to much, there’s really nothing to see, would you agree?” Gilberto offered.

“There’s lots of foothills, flatlands, but everything is very far, is that right?” Júlia intervened. “These are places hard to get to, and oftentimes you can only get there on horseback. Some of those places I, myself, have never been to.”

“Mr. Jê,” Cristina insisted, “if you don’t mind, I’d like to go everywhere and see every place.”

“No problem at all with me. We have to work it out with Edu because of his chores, and, please, you don’t have to call me ‘Mr.’ or ‘sir’.”

“The following is this,” Edu said, speaking in a peculiar way that almost made Cristina laugh, “whenever I can, I go out with the two of you part of the day and the other part I do my regular job here. To see the ore and the mining we need more than two days. One full day would be needed for us to see the Fox Mine; there is another mine on the way there, and some little man-made mining holes in the ground. Then, we need another full day to see the flatlands in the area known as the Mine Creek.”

...

Everybody then decided to do as she wanted and show her the entire farm.

...

That evening she felt more comfortable and had a great night’s sleep. At long last, she had a scheduled program to follow, and she would know the heart of the gerais. On the other hand, Juca’s attitude gave her some bad vibes, and she decided to talk to Júlia about it.

“He’s married and has two kids, a boy and a girl,” Júlia explained, describing his wife Vilma, so that Cristina would be able to identify her if she were around, and then Júlia added, “He sure wants something from you.”

Just a few yards away, in Juca’s house, a silent drama was starting to unfold.

Rupture

In bed, Vilma tried to get closer to her husband.

“Get away from me !” Juca hissed at her, snakelike.

“What is goin’ on?”

“Nothin’!”

Taken aback and scared by her husband’s reaction, the young woman moved away from him. This was the first time he had rejected her, and she might have dismissed it as a passing, though unpleasant, incident, except that she remembered other recent things. Her husband seemed infatuated with the young woman who had arrived on the farm. Initially, she didn’t think much of it, for, after all, she herself had admired Cristina that afternoon in the yard. At dinner, Juca spoke about her the whole time, about how she talked and acted and moved, about how pretty she was —yet even that his wife had regarded as normal. But she did find it odd when he dressed up very nicely and groomed himself to go to Jeremias’s house after dinner. He had never gone there in the evening. She also thought it weird that he continued to talk euphorically about her when he came back from the house. And now —the straw that broke the camel’s back —for the first time he had rejected her in bed. Putting all this together and using her female intuition, Vilma realized that only one conclusion was possible —her husband was in love with Cristina.

A wave of confused feelings overwhelmed her: sadness, sorrow, fear, humiliation, you name it. ...

At daybreak, Vilma immediately started taking care of the household chores, and Juca just kept walking around, until it was time for him to do his regular job of driving a tractor. ...

Adaptation

During the following days, Cristina settled into a routine. She would wake up very early, at dawn, to go for a walk and do some exercises. She quickly learned to ride a horse and would sometimes ride alone to the mangoes and plantations. She found out that, in those places, it was actually better to ride a mule or a donkey, which are both more stable and safer than a horse. From then on, she would regularly ride a soft-stepping mule.

In late afternoons, she would talk to people in the yard, when everyone would look up at the sky, looking for clouds that might support their hopes for rain. These late-afternoon chats were a great opportunity to know people and to learn many things. To the children she would also tell stories, which she would make up on the spur of the moment, and the children would love them. At about the same time, in the early evening, Jeremias would ride to the special confinement area where the cows gave birth to their calves. “This is what gives me the greatest pleasure in life,” he once confided to Cristina.

After dinner, she would visit one house or another. She felt especially close to Edu and his wife. When she visited Juca’s house, Juca would go out of his way to welcome and please her, while Vilma felt rather embarrassed. After these visits, Cristina would later join Jeremias’s family in their living room.

These conversations were a time-honored tradition in the region and were an opportunity for her to gather information about the farm’s vegetation and types of soil and about how to care for the cattle, the springs, the plantations, and the crystal mines. One or two workers were always present, not to mention Juca, who had practically become her shadow.

Everyone could see how he felt towards her, but no one did anything about it. That was the local custom. Love affairs were very explosive for those people, who got offended very easily. Cristina had no alternative but to go on with her life, pretending that she didn’t realize what was going on and treating Juca the same way as she treated everybody else.

There was nothing particularly special about her day to day life, except that it was quite interesting, given the fact that everything was exotic to her. She also enjoyed Júlia’s friendship. Sometimes she would wonder what practical purpose her stay there could possibly have. Maybe the blue-light episode had been but a dream, perhaps the urgent thoughts were merely her own, nothing more than her overworked imagination. Why would she have to come so far, to such a poor region, to carry out an undefined mission? Yet, she had a stronger side, which kept her alert. ...

The Work Starts

One morning this urgent thought came to Cristina: “Carry out soil analyses.”

At first, she didn’t pay much attention to this thought, but, since it wouldn’t go away, she figured it must be linked to the mission. However, a doubt lingered: should these soil analyses be from the mineral or the agricultural standpoint? She favored the latter, inasmuch as she wasn’t sure about mineral analyses and had an excellent book on farming chemistry. She recalled having seen in a specialized store in Belo Horizonte, as she was preparing to travel, a set of reagents appropriate for use in the field.

Having made up her mind on this issue, she talked to Júlia about a trip to Itacambira, so that she could order what she needed. They decided to go there the next day, on muleback and horseback. Cristina had been on the farm for ten days, and it was high time she called her family in Belo Horizonte anyway. The two young women would stay three days in Itacambira, plenty of time to order what she needed.

They had some interesting experiences during the trip. They went up and down rocky hills, followed a trail that had been opened by animals passing through over the decades, and forded small water streams. Sometimes, for the sake of safety, they had to walk, pulling the horses and mules behind them. At one time, her heart suddenly started beating faster, for no apparent reason, and confusing sensations and feelings flooded her whole body.

She mentioned this to Júlia, who thought that she might not be feeling well. Cristina climbed down from the mule, sat on a stone by the banks of the Highgrass Creek —whose head waters were nearby —and just waited anxiously for the strange feeling to go away, which it did after a while. At that moment, they were just leaving the large farm.

“The farm boundary is really a watershed. When rainwater falls up there,” Júlia explained and pointed to a hilltop, not far from where they were, “part of the water goes one way and part of it goes the other way, and that’s how we get our farm boundaries; pretty cute and neat, ain’t it? Our farm is that way and this other way here is our neighbor’s farm. The divider is right over there, in the watershed I mentioned. There is no need for any fence because there is nothing valuable here anyway.”

Cristina looked around and saw that her friend was right: there was nothing around save rocks and stones, low shrubs and very sandy soil. ...

...

Distracted by their conversation, Cristina became a bit careless, and her mule suddenly took off on a gallop, following the trail back to the farm. Júlia immediately took her horse after the fleeing mule. Cristina climbed up higher to watch the chase. At the top, on the watershed, her heart skipped a beat and then raced again. She felt confused and her legs shook. She felt as she had when she had seen the farm for the first time. Although she was interested in watching Júlia going after the escaping mule, she walked towards the opposite side of the watershed divider. She was feeling all right again, but suddenly the odd feelings came back with a vengeance. She decided to sit on a rock and wait for Júlia to come back from the mule chase.

“This is what happens,” remarked Júlia, as she arrived, pulling the mule by her reins. “If we let go of the animal, she goes back to the place where she lives. This is why we have to be so careful.”

“I just felt that sensation again, you know, the heart racing, understand?”

“Wow! D’ya think you’re maybe sick or something?”

“I don’t think so. It must be the mystery, some sort of warning regarding the mission.”

”What exactly is this mission, anyway?”

”Nothing. Let’s not talk about it.”

In Itacambira, they stayed at Edvar’s house. Cristina went to the telephone company and called her parents, Aunt Luci, and João, asking the latter for some materials on agricultural soil analyses. She told him where to find it all, including a special package and manuals. ...

...

On the way back, as the pair passed the watershed divider that served as the limit between the two farms, Cristina felt her heart racing again and her mind was momentarily confused. She was intrigued to find this happening every time she crossed the farm limits. It is too much of a coincidence. These things must be connected. They simply can not happen at random. All right, blue light, talk to me, I am listening very attentively, and, so far, I have done every thing we agreed on. She was beginning to admit that something very special was happening to her.

Jeremias agreed that, for her analyses, Cristina should use a table in the smaller shed where tools were kept. The reagents and everything else she received guaranteed reliable results. The table in the shed became her laboratory.

Every day she would go out on foot or on muleback, collecting samples from a certain type of terrain, carrying out the analyses, and writing down the results. As she was collecting material on the Old Farm location, with Júlia at her side, she came in contact for the first time with a crystal mine.

Electricity from Crystals

“This is the Old Farm Mine,” Júlia told her, showing an area measuring roughly fifty by two hundred meters.

The place was very much like Filó had described it, the mine itself stretching in a northwestern-southern direction. The place was full of sand and pebbles, rocks of various sizes, including some huge ones. Everything seemed scattered around, in no special order. Very rarely a few shrubs could be seen, here and there.

“Right up ahead there’s a hole, and there was crystal in it. Let’s go there and I’ll show you,” Júlia invited her.

Near the southern end of the mine, there was indeed a round hole, resembling a drilled well, a little more than one meter in diameter, which had been covered by wooden logs to prevent cattle or any other animals from falling in. The two young women dismounted, tied their animals to a shrub, and removed some of the logs to look inside the hole. It was so dark inside that nothing could be seen down below. As far as the walls could be seen, they were sandy and rough —and in a few spots there were tiny crystals that shone in the light.

“Gilton opened this hole, looking for crystal. It took a long time to dig because the sand was rock hard. Look here,” Júlia was kicking the sandy soil about three feet from the hole and it looked as if she were kicking solid rock. “But at the edge it’s actually very soft, look,” she went on, kicking the edge of the hole. “To open a well like this, you have to dig and drill through some very tough soil.”

She also told Cristina that that hole and three others nearby had to be opened with explosives and mining equipment. To the side, Cristina found pieces of crystal, left over from someone’s prospecting, and one whole piece measuring some three centimeters in length and less than half a centimeter in diameter.

“It is so beautiful!” Cristina exclaimed. “The point and the facets are perfect.”

“Darn! The way you talk about it, it sounds as if you understand these things.”

“I studied this in Belo Horizonte, before coming here. I also talked a few times with an expert and she gave me a few practical classes. When I found out that this region is rich in crystal quartz, I became interested, understand?”

“Yes, I do now. The crystal from here was good, real transparent, but there wasn’t very much, only some two hundred kilograms or so. The largest stone probably didn’t weigh more than four hundred grams. Nothing was found in the other three holes over there.”

“What about those stones in there, what are they?” Cristina pointed to some broken milky stones, beside some sand and pebbles.

“We call them Dog’s teeth. It’s a sign of crystal.”

“A sign?”

“Yes, when we find that kind of ore it’s a sign that there may be crystals underneath. Each ore has different signs. For instance, over in the Macaúba River, there are signs of diamond. If you screen the pebbles, you may find a small black stone; ‘rust’ is what we call it, which is a sign of diamond. Dog’s teeth is a sign of crystal, see?”

“So, when you see certain ore, you basically have a rough idea where to prospect?”

“That’s it, you got it. Otherwise, you’d just be digging all over the place. This way, you have a sign to follow as a guide.”

“Nature is full of signs,” Cristina remarked.

The two young women walked about the mine and came to the three holes that had been blasted open at about the same time.

“Nothing was ever found in them,” Júlia said.

Cristina found out that Jeremias had done some mining on his farm. He had attempted to reach deeper layers because the surface had been pretty much played out by old miners, especially during and after World War II. At that time, there was no deep-mining equipment.

Back where they had left the animals, Cristina invited Júlia to sit down on some Dog’s teeth boulders, by a shade tree. Cristina took off her boots — the kind of footwear suggested by one of the men who gave her information about the gerais — and rested her feet. When she placed them on the ground, she felt some itching and as if they had no feeling. It feels as if my feet are asleep, she thought. She pressed her feet against her boots and the sensation went away. She planted them again on the ground and the feeling came back. She repeated this same movement several times.

“What is this?” Júlia asked, upon seeing what she was doing.

“Something kind of weird. I’m going for a walk, barefooted.”

“Be careful or you might cut your feet on some sharp stone.”

Cristina started walking and realized that the itching decreased. She walked to one side, then to the other, and again felt an intense sensation. She walked straight ahead and, at times, moved slightly right or left. Every time she felt the sharp sensation, it reinforced her impression that she was experiencing something special, and her heart would beat faster. When she would walk by the other holes Jeremias had dug in the ground, the feeling would come when she was from five to ten meters from the blasted wells. She walked over one hundred meters and then came back. Halfway thought the walk, this thought came to her: “It is the piezoelectric effect.”

Ideas cascaded at once into her excited mind. What I feel is electric power! Twisted and pressed into the bosom of the earth, the crystals generate electric power and I am feeling them now —or is that really what is happening? With my boots on, I felt nothing because its rubber soles isolated me from the electricity. But is that really it? Could it be? Puzzled and a bit shaken, she called Júlia, who had been observing her, and asked her friend to take off her shoes.

“Well? Do you feel anything?”

“No, I don’t feel nothing at all. Why? Do you feel something?”

“Nothing? You feel absolutely nothing?”

“That’s right, nothing! Not a thing!”

A highly emotional Cristina gave up. The best she could do was to keep sitting there, with her legs stretched out, her body heaving backward, and her hands supporting her on the soil. Then, she lay down. Eyes closed against the strong sunshine, she felt the warmth in her whole body. Tears of joy trickled down her cheeks.

“What was it? What happened?” an anxious Júlia asked.

“Nothing, not a thing.”

As her friend insisted to know the source of her emotion, she replied that her tears were caused by the strong sunshine.

On the way back, a few yards from the mine, Cristina gathered the soil sample she had needed for the analysis, thinking: If you look for it, you’ll find it — and sometimes what you find is more precious than what you are looking for. It has to be crystal down there. I have to go and check, and only then will I talk to them. Once she got her emotions under control, she began to admit that this experience was much more serious that she had realized previously.

On the way back she kept reflecting. What if I feel the electricity? She wondered. The electric potential generated in the crystals’ electric axes is quite low. How could I feel it? It makes no sense at all. The blue light, was that the source of the feeling? It has to be — no doubt about it — it has to be!

“It is the piezoelectric effect,” the thought returned to her.

During the regular evening conversation, Cristina told everyone that she’d already collected much agriculturally-interesting soil data, but she still had to analyze deeper layers in some places. She asked Jeremias whether someone could dig down to a dozen feet or so, in order for her to get some deeper samples. She vaguely mentioned that she wanted to research some crystals and said that she would like to finally see the mines, to which Jeremias replied, “You check with Edu about going to the mines. As for digging the hole, I’ll think about it.”

Jeremias had shown little interest in her soil studies and was showing little interest now. After many years of working the soil, he figured he had nothing to learn from a young woman who was just starting in this field.

Cristina also faced a new predicament, for now she had to figure out why her feet itched when she was barefoot. The simplest thing to do would be to try the same experiment in other mines. If she felt the same thing, it would mean that the feeling had to do with the crystal-generated electricity. Beyond that, it would also mean that she was involved in a process transcending logic, which couldn’t be explained by the laws of physics, since no one else was feeling those impulses.

...

That evening, the yard really came to life. At the end of the working day, the workers came by and listened to all the news. The atmosphere was almost electric. Nearly every man, woman, and child was there, talking about all the happenings. Juca was more excited than anybody else.

“She has a lot of power,” he kept saying over and over again.

“Hi, Cristina, everything ok?” Júlia asked, making conversation while her friend continued with the analyses that would continue late into the night.

“Everything’s fine. How about you?”

“You were too much today.”

“It has been a very interesting day, but I can’t let my mind wander away from what I’m doing, understand? Can we talk some other time?”

“Sure,” Júlia answered, sitting on a stool and promising to keep silent.

Seeing how interested her friend was, Cristina called her to come and help. Júlia accepted promptly and excitedly.

The door to the shed was always open, and that afternoon a string of people walked by just to take a peek at her, as if she were from outer space. They pretended that they were going somewhere and looked curiously inside. Some would actually walk in, using the excuse that they needed to pick up something inside, when in fact they wanted to look at her. Juca did this several times. Cristina was no longer just the young, well-schooled, city woman. She was more like a newly-arrived guardian angel.

The analyses kept the two young women busy until dinner time. They got along so well with each other that they agreed that Júlia should become a permanent assistant.

...

Cristina felt somewhat like a messenger. Things were unfolding through her but not from her, yet she was very much affected by it all. Inevitably, she would reconcile, in a consistent fashion, all these facts with the reasons why she had come to this place. Now, however, she continued to ponder the possible connections between these occurrence and likely future revelations about human beings.

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The Mysterious Blue Light
Conflict in the Family
Number Forty in the Bible
The Number Forty in Astronomy

Chapter 2 - The Unknown Mission

Preparations for the Unknown Mission
Fear and Courage
A Vision of the Gerais
Genes and Chromosomes
Adoption
The Choice
On the Way to her Destiny

Chapter 4 – The Entrails of the Gerais

First Results of Soil Analyses
Agricultural Soil
Into the Bowels of the Gerais
Quartz Crystal
The Pain for the Lost Love
Map of the Entrails of the Soil
Soil Multiplication
Clays
Edu’s Story
Vereda and Oasis
Cristina Takes Off

Chapter 5 – Dreams and Apprehension

Testing the Signs
Untrue Faith
Problems With the Itching Sensation
The Feeling of Defeat
The Evil Seed
Treasure of Major Importance
Diamonds
Outraged