Atan lives about four thousand five hundred years ago on the Cyclades, a group of Greek islands. The quiet, introverted boy has an extraordinary talent for modelling clay and creates mythological figures that are destined to outlast the millennia and eventually end up in the Louvre in Paris.
His parents realize early on that Atan cannot live without his art and send him to the island of Naxos, where he is trained as a marble sculptor. But there he is forced to give up his creativity and concentrate on skill and technique instead - until his master realizes that he must not restrict his pupil's artistic development.