a lot of books in these stories eh?

Some time before the great war, in a small mud-brick hovel on the edge of a meadow, high in the mountains where it snows half of the year, lived a family of yak herders. Every day they would tend their herd and their gardens and stores of food, and every night by the light of beeswax candles they would read one book together, and write another.

The father had been a scribe, and the mother a booktender in the palace, before it was sacked during a petty war. They were both very earnest, honest people, and that is why they left the city to herd yak in the mountains. Every spring the father made a journey down out of the mountains, to return books, sell the family's work, to borrow more manuscripts, and to purchase more paper and ink.

For years the family built up a reputation as first rate scholars, copying and illuminating the classics with the greatest skill. One winter that changed when their youngest daughter started asking questions about the books they were working on. When the father went back to the city that spring he did not bring all of the family's work down with him. But he borrowed more than usual, and there was a funny sparkle in his eye that his friends had not seen before.

Seven years later, in the town at the foot of the mountains, the first stirring chapter of The New Book appeared,. It was lying in the street and it was written in an unsteady hand that had never been seen before by the scholarly community. But its conclusions were inescapable and deeply unsettling. Every spring for the next 23 years a new chapter appeared found its way to a sympathetic scholar, and over the years the unknown hand grew stronger and more skilled. And then suddenly the book ended, and the unknown hand was never seen again.

The family's children were all married off and settled down by the time The New Book reached the great cities that would be the cradle of the Great Uncovering. And to this day the mother and father lie side by side in simple graves near the mud-brick hovel where some now say the Uncovering was born.