Water That Went Hard

Down in Barahona the rough stone arrives at small workshops that smell of wet dust. A saw opens the lump. Under the blade the grey outside falls away, and there it is: blue, in bands and swirls with little white islands in it, like a photograph of the sea taken from very high up.

The stone is called pectolite, and plain grey and white pectolite turns up in a great many countries. Blue pectolite is found here and nowhere else. That is the whole story of larimar in one sentence. People have hunted for a second deposit for fifty years and have never found one anywhere on the planet.

The colour is usually put down to copper, which slips into the crystal in the place where calcium should be, although recent laboratory work suggests manganese has a hand in it as well. What is certain is how the blue got there. This is old volcanic rock, and long after the lava had cooled, hot water worked its way through the gas bubbles trapped inside it and filled them, slowly, from the walls inward. The stone is, quite literally, water that went hard.

The workshop grinds each piece round and domed, then polishes it until it shines like glass. The darker and deeper the blue, the more it is worth, and the very best of it is what miners and dealers call volcanic blue. Polly watches a tray fill up, one stone at a time. No two of them match. Not one of them will ever be matched again anywhere on Earth.