Proud of his purchase, Marty marveled at the magnificent stone in his hand. His wife Judy—they had been married just two months ago—leaned over his shoulder and looked at it curiously.

“And what can it do?” she asked.

“It’s a seeing stone, but I’m not sure yet what it’s supposed to show us.”

“Really? Where did you get it?”

“That old woman gave it to me.”

Judy frowned. Marty had given away half their belongings for junk again!

“No, no, I didn’t give her much for it,” he defended himself, before she had even said anything. She registered with pleasure that Marty was able to learn; he had finally understood that she wasn’t happy with his weak bargaining skills.

“What did you give her for it?”

“Only that big basket from your grandmother.”

“What? You gave her my basket for that stone?”

“It’s not just a stone, it’s a seeing stone.”

“You seen anything with it, yet?”

“Stop it, Judy, it was just a basket.”

“But, it was from my grandmother. And…was it empty when you gave it to the old hag?”

“Well…”

“It wasn’t empty.”

“Just some food! Damn it, Judy, the woman was poor and hungry.”

“So, apparently the seeing stone didn’t do her any good.”

Marty sighed and Judy nodded. Marty had not learned enough yet. But then again, he had a good heart; the poor old woman had moved him. Judy had wanted to be married to a good man—well, congratulations, she had managed.

“Okay. So, how do we get that stone to work?” she asked. “Did the old hag give you any instructions?”

“Yes, you have to hold it in moonlight and rub it like this.”

Marty demonstrated. He held the stone in his left hand and rubbed it with the palm of his right in circular movements three times.

“So, now we need moonlight,” Judy said.

“Yes. None tonight, too many clouds.”

“Did she tell you what we would see with that stone?”

Marty shrugged his shoulders. “She was a bit vague.”

Now, why didn’t that surprise her?

“She said that we would see something beautiful and magical, lots of colors and that it would be calming and soothing,” Marty continued.

“And that’s it? She said nothing more?” Judy asked and couldn’t keep her voice from sounding strained. She couldn’t believe he had fallen for that.

“Well, no…”

Judy sighed. “Marty, next time, give something away from your stuff, not mine,” she said and Marty frowned.

---

Judy quickly forgot about the seeing stone. She had more important things on her mind. Getting their stall ready for the market day and preparing their goods; that meant washing the potatoes and carrots, putting them into baskets. Baskets…she badly missed the one Marty had given to that old hag for a presumed seeing stone. Judy scoffed as she remembered. But, soon market day came, the best day of the week, when everyone gathered in the village and when there was lots of information to be exchanged and a little money to be made.

Satisfied but exhausted, she sat in the kitchen by the fire, after a long market day and spun some wool. Marty entered very excited.

“Judy, Judy, come, you have to see this! Come!” he said and pulled at her arm.

“What?”

“Come on! Come outside.”

“Why? It’s cold, I don’t want to go outside.”

“You want to, you have to see this!” he said and pulled her with him behind the house and into the cool and clear full moon autumn night.

“Here…look!”

He held the seeing stone in his hand, exposed it to moonlight and rubbed it three times with his right hand.

Judy stared and started. The stone changed, it became glassy and all the colors of the rainbow shimmered in it suddenly. She wanted to say “wow” but thought better of it. She just saw some pretty colors, that was all. And for that, Marty had given away her grandmother’s basket, full of food even.

“And that’s it?” she asked.

“What?”

“I see some pretty colors, but I thought this is a seeing stone. It’s supposed to tell you secrets, show you hidden treasures or truths or the future or something like that.”

Marty put the stone into his pocket, peeved.

“I think it’s beautiful.”

“Well, yes, but…”

“Stop nagging!” he said, almost shouting.

“I’m not nagging!”

“Sure you are!”

Judy sighed, turned around and went back inside. Marty didn’t follow her. Fine, let him stare at his pretty stone half the night in the cold. She would sit by the cozy fire and spin wool.

She did so, but after a while wondered why Marty hadn’t come back. He couldn’t have been staring at that wretched stone all this time, could he? Had he come in and she hadn’t noticed?

“Marty?”

No answer. He’d catch a cold out there and then she’d have to do all the hard work in their fields.

She looked out the window, behind the house where she had left him and there he was, still staring at that stone.

She opened the door. “Marty! Come back inside! You’ll catch a cold out there!”

“But it’s so amazing. It’s more than just colors! There’s something to them…come Judy, look!”

She sighed, but pulled her stole tighter around her and again joined Marty in the moonlight.

“The color patterns repeat themselves after a few minutes. And there are some weird fuzzy things inside them. I’m trying to find out what they are, but I haven’t gotten it yet.”

She stared with him at the stone. He was right, maybe every three minutes the color show started over. And yes, some weird white stuff, ornaments maybe, flickered through the color when it was red and vice versa, meaning the same ornaments showed up in red when the background was white. In between those two patterns were lots of other colors though, like a rainbow, yellow, green, red with white ornaments and then blue and violet and white with red ornaments.

After two sequences, Judy was bored.

“Any other patterns?”

“No, just that.”

“Marty, it’s pretty, yes, but it’s cold, come inside, you’ll catch a fever,” she said and pulled at his arm.

Reluctantly, he followed her.

The coming two nights were clear as well and the waning moon shone bright. Marty stood outside behind the house for an hour each night and stared at the patterns of color on the seeing stone.

“Marty! Come inside! You’ll catch a cold! Let that stupid stone be!”

Grumbling, he returned.

“What’s so fascinating about this color pattern?” she asked as he closed the door behind him.

“I think the white stuff in the red and the red in the white, that it’s some form of writing.”

“Writing?”

“Yes! It’s a message! I’m sure!”

“You can’t read and write, Marty.”

“You can’t either. I will show the stone to the pastor tomorrow; he can read and write.”

“Good luck with that. This is heathen stuff, if I may remind you. The pastor won’t read that writing for you but will just take that stone away from you and scold you for buying useless junk from witches.”

“Oh…damn…right.”

“If you think it’s writing, ask one of the merchants who are coming through on market day. Some of them can read.”

“That’s a great idea, Judy, thanks, I’ll do that,” he said, bent over her and kissed her gently.

“About time,” she teased. “I was already getting worried that you find that cold stone more interesting than my warm bosom.”

He giggled and opened her dress and they made love on the rug in front of the fire.

---

Marty had to wait for two weeks before he finally found a merchant who claimed he could read.

Since Judy was afraid that Marty would sell half their house to pay the merchant for reading what was in the stone, she insisted on joining Marty in the tavern for the negotiations with the merchant.

“This is a very interesting proposal you have there, Marty,” the merchant, Diles by name, said. “I want to have a percentage of what we read in that seeing stone. Maybe it’s the hint to a treasure and you would never find out about it without me, so I’d say I should at least get seven out of ten of whatever it is that we find.”

“Ha!” Judy said and started to haggle with Diles. She threw an anxious glance at Marty but noticed quite pleased that he had sat back and enjoyed his ale, happy that he had taken her along.

Judy was pretty good at haggling, and in the end, they settled on four out of ten for the merchant and six out of ten for Judy and Marty, mostly on the argument that, after all, the stone belonged to Marty and not to the merchant.

“Marty, can I borrow your wife when I come to town? She is a magnificent haggler and I could use her services!” Diles said with a smirk.

Marty and Judy both laughed out loud.

Luckily, the moon was shining that night, though quite weak, less than a half moon’s crescent hung low in the sky. But it was sufficient, and behind the tavern, Marty and Judy showed Diles the seeing stone. Its pattern never changed, every night the same colors in the same sequence and the same ornaments in white and red.

The merchant scratched his head. “I am sorry, but I cannot read this. It says ‘refreshing’, I think, and then letters I cannot read, they are so squiggled.”

“Refreshing? What does that mean…” Marty asked, disappointed.

“There is more, but sorry, my friend, for the life of me I cannot read this squiggly stuff.”

After some more guesswork they gave up. Judy and Marty bought the merchant a pint of ale and they had a fun evening in the tavern.

Judy and Marty repeated the procedure after every market day, at least when it wasn’t cloudy. Judy made her peace with the seeing stone and honestly started to like it. Before this, Marty had not allowed her to go to the tavern. It wasn’t a place for a decent woman, he had used to say. But he needed her haggling skills and since he was there to protect her, nobody dared to bother her.

Judy greatly enjoyed the evenings in the tavern; it was so interesting to meet all the merchants and to listen to their stories from all over the country.

They ran into several merchants who could identify the word “refreshing” in the seeing stone, another one thought to be able to read the word “delicious” too, but none of them managed to decipher the rest.

“You know what, Marty?” Judy said one evening after another fruitless attempt to have a merchant read the ornaments. “I’d like to learn how to read.”

He stared at her and shuddered. “I’ve never heard of a woman who could read.”

“So? Then I’d be the first one! Someone has to be the first one and when I look at most of these merchants…well, come on, I can’t be dumber than any of them!”

Marty laughed. “Well, you’re right about that, I suppose.”

She fluttered her eyelids at him. “Come on, Marty, wouldn’t it make you terribly proud if your smart wife could read?”

“Not if you’re going to turn your back on me when you can read because you’ll think you’re better than me.”

“Oh Marty, you know I’d never do a thing like that.”

“Fine, but how are you going to find someone who will teach you to read? The only one in our village I know who can read is the pastor and he’d rather die than teach a farmer’s wife.”

“Damn, that’s true,” Judy said and sighed. She hadn’t thought of that.

They started to ask the merchants where they had learned how to read and write and most of them said they had learned in the schools in the big cities.

Judy finally understood what had come over Marty as he had gotten the seeing stone. He had become obsessed with it and she felt the same now. She had become obsessed with the idea of learning how to read and write. Finally, they found a merchant who claimed that he knew an old woman, a rich farmer’s wife, in a village further down the main road, who could read. So, Judy wouldn’t be the first woman to know how to read and write! That soothed Marty, but Judy was disappointed that she wouldn’t be the first. Well, she’d have to live with that.

The next Sunday, after church, Marty and Judy dressed in their finest clothes, yoked their ox to their cart and rode to their neighboring village. Neither of them left their village often and they were both very excited.

“You know, I’m grateful you gave that old hag my basket,” Judy said as they drove along. “That seeing stone made our lives much more interesting, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Marty said, grinning. “I let you come to the tavern with me, we speak to all these merchants and look here, now we’re going to see some rich lady!”

They laughed and kissed long and deep. “And I’ll bet that you’ll have me pregnant by Christmas,” Judy said and Marty laughed so loud and dirty that she almost pushed him from the cart before she kissed him again.

---

The old lady, Lady Esther, was much friendlier than both had thought she would be. She was very old and lonely and lived all by herself in that big house with two servants. Her husband was dead, her son in a big town and her daughters had married and moved away. She asked them to spend the night so that she would be able to take a look at the seeing stone and Marty and Judy couldn’t believe their eyes as they saw the giant and wonderful feather bed that she offered them to sleep in.

They had a large dinner with her and the old lady said that she hadn’t enjoyed herself like that in many years.

Then finally, they all went outside into the wintry cold.

“It will snow soon,” Esther said.

“Yes, it will,” Judy said and nodded while Marty exposed the stone to moonlight and rubbed it.

The color spectacle soon began and Ester stared at it fascinated.

“It’s hard to read these letters indeed, but I think I know what they say, though it doesn’t make any sense.”

“You can read it?” Judy and Marty shouted in unison.

“Yes, I think it says ‘Refreshing and delicious. Drink Coca Cola’ but what on Earth is ‘Coca Cola’?”

The three looked at each other.

“That’s all it says?” Marty asked, unable to hide his deep disappointment. Judy also sighed, no treasure, no hidden message, nothing, just gibberish.

“Yes, I’m afraid so, once in red and once in white.”

“Now that’s stupid…” Judy said, equally devastated.

Esther smiled at the couple. “Well, look at it this way. It brought us together. You would never have come here without this seeing stone. I would never have made friends with you and, although we know now what the seeing stone says, that doesn’t mean that I won’t teach you how to read. And I will teach both of you and you will teach your children and they will teach theirs and I will give you some of my books and you will read about things that are even more incredible than your seeing stone!”

Judy beamed with delight; Marty was shocked.

“You’ll teach me how to read and write, too?” he asked.

“Sure, Marty.”

“Oh, no, no…Judy is the smart one of us.”

“You’ll learn, Marty, I’m sure,” Esther said and patted his back. “And, now let’s get inside, it’s too cold.”

And they all went inside and soon Marty and Judy lay in that heavenly feather bed and looked at the ceiling.

“I wonder what this Coca Cola stuff is,” Marty said.

“Something to drink,” Judy said.

“But, who would give a drink such a silly name?”

“Yes, it makes me worry about the future,” Judy said.

“What? Why the future?”

“I think the stone lets us see the future, where they have this drink with a silly name. And a future that has such silly names for things must be silly, too.”

“We don’t know whether it shows us the future, Judy. Maybe it’s something completely different. Maybe we just don’t get it.”

Judy sighed, then huddled closer to him. “Forget it, Marty, and kiss me instead,” she said.

He did, and it wasn’t the only thing he did that night in that heavenly feather bed. Esther and Judy loved to tease Marty that Judy’s baby had been conceived that night, which made him blush without fail. And by the time their first son was born, Judy and Marty could both read and write a bit and were still eager to learn more.