Wisdom from the Pearl Necklace

by Carol Demma Mau Narrated by Skye Alley

Overview

Trudy and her friends are sent out on a wonderous adventure by the queen and king of the American Inner World of Earth. With the help of the fairies and elves, they set out on a journey to learn how to reach the inner power they all possess so that they can go back and teach the humans of Earth how important they are to the Earth's well-being. This is a fable of fun and a spiritual journey you will not soon forget!

Product Details

BN ID:	2940160630946
Publisher:	Ewings Publishing LLC
Publication date:	01/01/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged
Age Range:	8 - 11 Years

Read an Excerpt

Wisdom From The Pearl Necklace

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By Carol Demma Mau

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2014 Carol Demma Mau
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-9012-7

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CHAPTER 1

From the morning fog, a light green mist arises and forms itself into a beautiful, graceful, long stretch that slowly begins to encircle the grand old oak tree that stands by the ancient creek in the woods where the Anasazi once lived. Swirling, the mist shapes itself into a silky, slinky strand and heads toward the highest branches. Small, pearlescent balls seem to appear out of nowhere and cling to the delicate green strand, giving the impression of a pearl necklace. At that same moment, a beautiful, diaphanous pale-green woman emerges from the oak. With a look of tenderness, she reaches for the strand of pearls as it circles around her neck. She lets the strand run through her fingers, her branches, in a benediction of gratitude. She is elegant in her movements; she is the soul of the tree. When the strand of luminescent beads reaches the top of the tree, its green glow bursts into an extraordinary rainbow of color that quickly swirls downward, heading toward the oak's exposed roots.

"Can you see her?" Excitedly, Trudy pushes the bush lower to give her friend Adele a better look.

Adele pulls her hand away from her mouth and anxiously whispers, "I can't believe what I'm seeing!"

The rainbow-colored band of light reaches the bottom of the tree and pushes itself into one of the oak tree's gnarled old roots, uncovering a small entryway. The woman of the oak looks toward the two girls hiding behind the bush and smiles a welcome. Her branches reach out to them and then point to the entryway.

"Get down!" Trudy pushes hard on Adele's shoulder, and both girls hit the ground, but the lovely Lady of the Oak catches Trudy's stare and beckons her forward. She stands. Adele grabs the back pocket of Trudy's jeans and tries to pull her down. Even though Trudy is much smaller than her companion, she is able to reach back, grab Adele's arm, and pull her up. Trudy's eyes lock into a hypnotic gaze as she stares at the lady. She walks closer to the tree, dragging her reluctant friend along with her. As the two approach the tree, they can see tiny figures in the pearlescent beads. Trudy thinks that they must be fairies or pixies. But that would be crazy! This whole thing is crazy! How can I be seeing a green lady in a tree?

The girls stop near the entryway and watch as the end of the rainbow strand makes its final descent past the Lady of the Oak. The lady's body begins to merge with the silky thread; it is an eerie sight yet beautiful to behold. She smiles again at the girls as she starts swirling to become one with the strand. Down she goes, disappearing like a ghost. As the last bit of light enters the passageway, it turns into a womanly hand, and its fingers beckon the girls to follow.

Poof! It is gone! The tree and the surrounding area look as they should at daybreak.

Both girls stand still and stare at the gnarled root, waiting to see what else will happen. Their hearts thump, and they both feel weak in the knees. Trudy lets go of Adele's arm, but just as she is about to speak, something else happens: a striking red fox jumps from the entryway, its coat brushed and as sleek as that of a show dog. She does not look like an animal that lives in the woods. The fox looks up as though she expects to see the girls; she stares at them for a moment and then nonchalantly walks away, never taking her eyes off of the two humans. Trudy and Adele watch the fox disappear into the morning light.

Mystified, Adele looks for a spot to sit down; she finds an old, fallen tree near the creek that fits her needs. She sits down quietly, too overwhelmed to speak. When Trudy told her that she wanted to show her something in the woods, she had never expected to see this. Trudy walks over, sits down next to her best friend, and looks at her for a moment before speaking.

"Well, that was weird, huh?" she says in a voice that is much too casual.

"Weird? That's what you have to say? Weird?"

Adele jumps up and puts both fists on her hips. Facing Trudy and stomping her foot, she then yells at her like a madwoman, "Are you crazy? This is so much more than weird! How can you be so laid back about seeing this? What's going on here? How long have you known about this?" Then, bending over and putting her hands on Trudy's shoulders, she says, "I know you're strange, girl, but what is this all about? You could have at least given me a hint of what to expect! That's what a good friend would have done! Am I right?"

Trudy's eyes fill with tears. She is surprised by Adele's reaction; she hadn't planned on seeing this either. She takes Adele's hands off of her shoulders and holds them in her own. "I don't know what this is about; that's why I wanted you to see it. Please sit back down." Trudy watches her friend angrily sit back down. Trudy feels like crying and thinks that maybe she shouldn't have shared this, but Adele is her best friend, and she thought that Adele would want to know. Maybe she should have kept this mystery to herself and not asked Adele to come this morning.

"Look, I never expected to see this," Trudy tries to explain. "All I saw yesterday was the green fog around the tree. That's what I brought you out here to see, Adele—not this. I didn't know this was going to happen—really."

Both girls sit in quiet concentration for a while.

Adele tries to calm herself. "I'm sorry about yelling at you. I was just feeling scared." Then, after waiting a few moments, she adds, "Why didn't your so-called angel come help us out?" In a bratty, jealous voice, she adds, "You're always talking about her and how important she is to you. Why didn't you just ask her to come?"

Trudy feels misunderstood and dejected. She ignores the last comment as she looks into her friend's big brown eyes and pats her leg. "Really, Adele, I didn't think that we would see anything like this. I saw the green fog yesterday morning when I took Tinker for a walk before school." Then, shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders, she adds, "I didn't think I needed to ask my angel for help. I didn't think we would see anything like this today—I promise."

Trudy looks sad as she stares back at her friend. Then, after a moment, she adds, "I brought you out here because I wanted you to see the green mist. I wanted you to see it because we're always talking and reading about fairies, and this reminded me of some of the stories where the fairies appeared in a soft, strange mist. That's all. I didn't think we'd see all this—that's for sure—and I didn't want to scare you."

Both girls sit quietly for a while in thoughtful reflection. This is something that they both have to mull over before they begin talking again, or they will end up in an argument, and neither girl wants that. They've been friends for way too long and know each other too well.

After about twenty minutes, Adele jumps up, turns to her companion, and squeals, "I've got an idea." She pulls Trudy up. "Let's go tell Maya what we saw; she knows everything about this place. Maybe she can tell us what it was."

Trudy instantly feels better. This is a great idea.

Both girls start to run through the woods toward Grandma Maya's house. Trudy's long strawberry-blonde ponytail swings in rhythm to her quick strides as she tries to keep up with Adele's long, agile movements. They race along the small stream that leads out of the woods and directly to Maya's house.

* * *

Trudy thinks that her best friend is beautiful, and she is jealous of the graceful way that Adele moves as she jumps over the rocks and branches in her path. Adele is light on her feet and agile as a cat. My friend, Trudy thinks, is as pretty as any model I have ever seen.

Trudy is on the small side for a fourteen-year-old. She is small boned and thin, with delicate features. She is the type of girl whom others will label as "cute" her whole life. She is a good athlete and a good student. When it comes to looks, Adele is the complete opposite. She is tall and elegant; her skin is a rich, creamy brown—a mixture of Mexican and African American. She has a muscular, taut body and is the smartest kid in school. The two girls have been friends from the moment they met as babies. They live next door to one another, and their moms are best friends too.

* * *

Maya Norn, known to all of the neighborhood kids as Grandma Maya, owns the woods and the field that runs behind Trudy and Adele's neighborhood. Her family settled there many years ago—"before the takers came," as her Native American grandmother used to say. Her Norwegian grandfather fell in love at first sight with her grandmother and with the land that her family lived on. He built a lovely house for his beautiful Indian princess on that same land, and Maya now lives in that house.

Maya is around eighty years old; no one knows for sure how old she is. She lives in the house alone, except for Henry the cat. She was married once and had a son. Both were lost to war—her husband in the Korean War and her son in Vietnam. She spends her days improving her land by taking care of the trees and the many gardens that surround her house. Everyone in Hazelton knows of her, and most find her charming. There are a few people in town, however, who would like to see Maya sell her land so that they can improve on it by putting up a shopping mall.

* * *

On this warm autumn Saturday, Maya works in her flower garden at the front of her house. She stops when she hears the girls burst through the bushes at the end of the woods and enter the open field to the east of Maya's small cherry orchard. Using her garden rake, she slowly stands and waves as the girls approach. She is a small, strong-looking woman with a broad smile. Her long, thick braids are now completely gray, and although she is up in years, her face is smooth and soft looking.

Adele stops to pull some leaves out of her hair, so Trudy reaches Maya first. Yelling hello, she grabs Maya in a big hug, almost knocking her over. Maya laughs as they hug. "My goodness! What are you two doing out so early?"

Trudy lets go of Maya, and then Adele takes her turn. "We have something to tell you that you won't believe!" Adele is a bit taller than Maya, and she picks her up off the ground when they hug. "We need to ask you about it."

"Well, put me down, darling, and ask."

Maya's old gray cat, Henry, walks over to see what is happening and meows up at Adele.

Adele drops Maya lightly onto the ground, pats Henry on the head, and then helps Maya fix the large-brimmed garden hat that slipped off her head during the hug. Maya takes one hand of each girl as they walk toward her front porch. All three seem to float up the front steps and into the waiting white wicker rocking chairs. Surprisingly, there are three glasses of lemonade waiting on the small, round white table in front of them. Trudy and Adele look at each other and shrug as they smile; they aren't really taken by surprise—something magical always happens when they are around Maya.

Henry jumps up onto the porch railing to lie down, and Maya gets comfortable in her rocker before she takes a slow sip of her lemonade. "Now, girls, tell me why you're so excited."

Both girls start to speak at once, making them impossible to understand.

"Slow down. One at a time, please." Maya rocks in her chair and smiles over at Henry, who is also trying to listen to what the girls are saying.

"You start, Tru," says Adele, pointing to her friend, "and don't leave anything out!" Henry lays his head down on his paws and curls his tail in anticipation.

"Well, I was walking Tinker in the woods yesterday morning, when I noticed a green mist by the stream, where the old oak tree is. I had never seen a green fog before, so I walked toward it. Tinker walked a few steps with me and then sat down, not moving another step. She sat still and just stared at the fog. When she did this, a light shot out of the mist toward the oak tree; it moved slowly and started to swirl around the tree. I watched it for a few seconds, and then I heard my mom yelling for me to come to breakfast. I wanted to stay, but Tinker started pulling on her leash, and you know how big my German shepherd is, so she pulled me back home."

Adele puts down her lemonade. "You told me you saw it on your way to school."

"I did. It was still there when I left for school, but it had disappeared by the time I came home. That's when I went to your house to make a date for this morning."

"We saw more than that this morning," Adele interrupts. "We saw a beautiful green lady appear from the tree. She was very tall and thin. We also saw these little balls of light with tiny people in them; they rode along the strand of light, and then they disappeared into the roots of the tree. It was really weird!" Adele smiles at Trudy.

Henry hisses as he stands and arches his back. He has spotted a fox in the distance and wants to let everyone know that it is there.

"Look, Adele. There's the fox." Trudy stands and walks to the porch rail, where Henry is. She feels that the eyes of the fox are looking right at her. The fox doesn't move; it just stares back, making Trudy feel a bit uneasy.

"We saw that fox jump out of the tree," Adele explains to Maya. "I think it's following us."

The fox turns its head slightly and looks at the old woman sitting with the girls. The woman nods politely to the fox, and the fox nods back and starts to walk away. The girls see the exchange and don't know what to make of it. Henry lies back down and relaxes.

"What day is it today?" Maya asks. She doesn't keep any timepieces or calendars; she feels that they force people to rush to get things done, and she likes to take her time with everything.

"It's Saturday," Adele answers, but she is thinking about the fox and watching her friend, who is still looking out over the porch rail.

"I mean the date," Maya persists.

Trudy turns around and faces Maya. "It's October twenty-eighth," she says in a monotone voice. "You nodded to the fox, and it went away. Why?"

"Did I? Well, I supposed that it had other things to do; after all, it is a creature of the night, and it is well past dawn."

"Why did you want to know the date, Maya?" Adele feels that Maya isn't going to talk about the fox anymore.

Maya smiles at Adele and asks, "Do you know what the fall equinox is?"

Adele answers as if she is in school. "It's the time of year when the sun crosses the equator, making nighttime and daytime the same length."

"Yes, that's true. But did you know that it is deemed a magical time of year for many people?"

The girls shake their heads. Trudy sits back down to listen to Maya, but the fox never leaves her thoughts.

"The ancients used to celebrate this time of year with a festival. Many cultures around the world thought that this was an important time, and they regarded the evening of October thirty-first as a time to celebrate the mysteries of the earth."

Adele likes Maya's drawn-out answers. They make her feel relaxed, as if they are playing a game. "Okay, but what has this got to do with what we saw in the woods?"

"Or the fox?" adds Trudy. She has picked up Henry and now has him in her arms.

Maya rocks in her chair as she speaks. "When I was a young girl, my great-grandmother would tell me the story of the Little People. She said that some of the people of the Cherokee Nation could see these Little People in the early hours of the morning around the time of the autumn equinox. The Little People would come out of the wooded areas here on beams of light; she said that they looked like a beautiful pearl necklace floating through the woods, in and around the trees. If you could get close enough, you could see the Little People in the balls of light. They were very hard to see because they moved quickly, and when there were many of them together, they looked like a mist or fog over the waters. She told me that the Little People lived under the earth so that they could take care of all growing things and that during certain times of the year, they would emerge from their homes near the roots of the oak trees to celebrate their work. She said that there were also some that lived under the waters to keep the rivers, lakes, and oceans clean for the water animals." Maya stops and takes a sip of her lemonade, and in her mind, she debates whether or not she should continue with her thoughts. She knows what the girls have seen but isn't sure they will understand the meaning. She takes a long look at their faces and decides to continue. "I believed that my great-grandmother was talking about the same kind of Little People that the Celts and other cultures talked about: the fairies. So as a child, I would always go looking for the lights in the woods—the Little People in the pearl necklace—especially during this time of year. Once, just once, I saw them by that same oak tree next to the creek."

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Wisdom From The Pearl Necklace by Carol Demma Mau. Copyright © 2014 Carol Demma Mau. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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