Perhaps the story of Josefa begins a dozen years earlier and even a few more years before that, already before she was born, before she had run the first barefoot steps in the fine white sand or jumped from pebble to pebble on the beach, before she had taken her walks on the island in the lee of Sandon's tall solemn pine trees and sung her songs, and before she had collected her treasury of shells and round stones, of amber and seagull eggs, of Roman coins, Carolingian silver, and Hanseatic pennies washed up by the waves and given to her from unknown deeps and times that still lay hidden out there.