where rainbows spangled the gilded air…

The bright sapphires slipped between his fingers and lay on the sequined grass behind him, illuminating his footprints as he entered the dark vaults of the forest.















With a cry Sanders raised his jewelled arm. In the sunlight the faint nodes of the gemstones he had stuffed into his cuff shone in the tissues of his arm like inlaid stars















Then he realised why Thorensen had brought the jewels to the young woman, and why she had seized on them so eagerly. By some optical or electromagnetic freak, the intense focus of light within the stones simultaneously produced a compression of time, so that the discharge of light from the surfaces reversed the processes of crystallization. Perhaps it was this gift of time which accounted for the eternal appeal of precious gems, as well as of all baroque painting and architecture. Their intricate crests and cartouches, occupying more than their own volume of space, so seemed to contain a greater ambient time, providing that unmistakable premonition of immortality sensed within St Peter's or the palace at Nymphenburg.


ballard / the crystal world























Here, wear this jewel for me, 'tis my picture
Twelfth Night / III iv 228