Under a field of stars my father used to lull me to sleep with the stories of my name. Opal, he said, is a stone that contains water in its sparkling microscopic depths. The perfect name for a girl who would inhabit both. The Arabs told him that opals fell down from the sky with lightning trapped inside. Wrapping one in a fresh bay leaf would make you invisible. When he was in Australia, the aborigines told him that the opal rocks were the footprints of the creator, bringing rainbows down where he touched the earth. When my father was cross he would tell me that in some lore the opal was half serpent, half devil; the glittering fire intended to seduce people to the underworld. The Roman Senator Nonius chose exile over selling his opal ring to Marc Anthony, who wanted to give it to his lover Cleopatra. To the Greeks, opals were prized as highly as diamonds because they were the tears of Zeus, the god who puts lightning in everything. On those nights I would dream of gods who cried in stone. In my dreams I became healer, shapeshifter, muse, demon. I was everywhere.
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The Cartographer's Daughter
AdventureWhen her father dies in a sudden bombing, Opal Hunt devotes herself to the task he left behind: finding the lost Library of Alexandria. Her quest takes her to the ruins in Alexandria, to the dens of pirates and spies, into the corrupt glittering str...
