The Knowledge Stone by Jack McGinnigle

most remarkable of men and being in love was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her in her life!
    He was so delightfully playful, too, she reflected. They both enjoyed laughing together, telling each other about the extremely funny events they had seen: the ropes of that heavily-loaded hay cart breaking and the road completely blocked with many bundles of hay; it had taken such a long time to reload the cart and no-one could pass by for hours! … the old fisherman overbalancing on the bridge and falling into the water among the fish he was trying to catch. How wet and furious he had been! … the village merchant’s carefully built display of apples, so lovingly and painstakingly constructed into a high tower outside his shop, suddenly collapsing catastrophically. How hilarious it had been to see the fruit rolling away in all directions! How funny to see the merchant dashing this way and that to retrieve his precious produce! Did you see? Some of the apples had even rolled away down the hill!
    Oh, how they laughed until the tears ran down their cheeks.
    Her mind now turned to the part of their tryst that she loved most: their special chasing game. How thrilling and exciting it always was to dash breathlessly around the trees, avoiding his outstretched arms, until that moment when he caught her. That glorious moment when his arm fell across her body! She recalled how they had played this wonderful game many times and the pressure of his arm on her back was the culmination of their amazing time together. It filled her with such yearning and suffused her with a feeling of absolute peace.
    Then her smile faded to solemn introspection as she recalled the day before. They had had gone to the forest as they usually did. Their chasing game had been played with all its energetic joy and the time had come for that moment of unified peace. Her old dress was so loose on her body that she was completely unaware of its billowing travel from feet to shoulders at that moment when she threw herself down on the leaves. She only realised that something unusual had happened when she found large copious folds of thick black material underneath her hands, arms and upper body. Certainly she would never have expected the closer-fitting undergarment to be lifted up too, to reveal her body almost completely.
    So instead of the usual light pressure of his muscular forearm across the loose waistband of her dress, it was a surprise, though certainly in no way unpleasant, to feel the touch of his warm flesh upon her own. It was then, registering his unexpected touch along with the distinctive caress of cool air upon the complete length of her lower limbs that she realised fully what had happened. At such moments, the human brain works remarkably quickly. On this occasion, the age-old wisdom of womanhood took over. She did nothing. She made no movement. She lay completely still.
    Wisdom can be instinctive and some wisdom is exactly that. But most wisdom is garnered and honed by the experience and learning that the progression of life brings. Maretta was the second child in a very poor serf family; her elder brother was a few years older and a younger brother had followed her. Family life had always been very hard. They lived precariously on a very small patch of infertile, rocky land which was, in fact, common land.
    The family were aware they had no rights to live on this common land and so were in constant fear of eviction. They knew that such evictions happened periodically and, if it ever happened to them, they knew they would be driven out of the area with anger and violence. Members of serf families had been injured or even killed in the course of such evictions.
    The five members of the family lived in a rude shack built on this land and they attempted to grow root vegetables and keep a few animals on the extremely poor soil surrounding the shack. This was mainly unsuccessful; the crops were stunted at best and the only animals that