The Stone Book

Mary wanted to learn to read and asked her stonemason father for a book. In reply, he sent her into a cavern deep under the hills where the stone was quarried. There she found a sand-floored chamber where, in the light of her candle, she could see the marks left by breaking waves in the rock above her head and, on the wall, the figure of a bull, a stonemason’s mark, and the outline of a hand that exactly matched her own. Looking down, she saw a myriad of footprints made by earlier generations of her family and, in a timeless moment, felt herself surrounded by a throng of people. When she got back home, her father did give her a book – but it was a different one from what she had expected.