Epilogue

My grandmother says that some things must not be profaned by speech.

And so I will write this, once, and no more – a thing which I have never told another living soul:

After I had sat for a time under the hazel tree, I went back into the Cave of Regrets.

It was warm. Dark. Ahead, a green glow. It was as if I walked into the night sky.

I saw the two women in the distance, deep in the heart of the cave. Dark figures against the green glowing light. There was a sound coming from the light, like a pulse. Like the echoing heartbeat of the universe.

Hannah drew a needle from her pocket, and they pricked one another’s fingers with great tenderness, drawing a bead of blood. I have never seen a thing so gentle and so violent. Then they placed their hands into the light.

Time tore in two.

I was both myself and not myself. I was Marketa, young and laughing and unafraid. I had traveled to Prague to meet with a patron: with his aid, I would at last be able to continue my investigation into the Elixir of Life. I passed the university, a surge of students flowed past me. I craned my neck to see the spires of the cathedral stretching toward the sky. I was young, and the world was mine.

And then I saw *her*, sitting in the abbey window above.

Her eyes cast down on her needlework, a faint secret smile that no one saw, no one but me.

My heart went out to her as if greeting an old friend. I lifted my hand, made as if to call out to her.

This would be the moment we met.

An instant containing everything that followed.

The walks along the riverbank, the stolen evenings in the meadow, the touch of her lips, her hair, the vows we whispered, the wildflowers we tied like rings around our fingers, her eyes lighting up with laughter, the smell of the letters she would leave for me, my longing, oh god the longing, the way my hand would tremble when I reached for her letter, knowing it would be the last, the empty space carved inside me, the places she would never touch again, the voice I would not hear, the smell of her letters gone, all of it gone, and with her absence a part of myself turned wild and senseless, a neverending howl of pain.

All this, I could avert.

I could withdraw my hand, and continue on my way without speaking to her, and this other life would fade away into nonexistence. I would be unimpeded by it, my vigor undisrupted, my heart undisturbed.

It would be as if she had never existed to me.

- All at once the vision shattered as Marketa wrenched her hand away from the glow.

She looked at Hannah. Slowly she put her hands on Hannah’s face. She ran her fingers along her temples, down her jaw, across her brow. As if convincing herself that Hannah was really there before her.

Then she kissed her, and the two of them intertwined so that they became a single silhouette.

As for me, I sat in the shadows, and I turned over in my heart what I had learned.

This, I think, is the real magic of the Cave of Regrets. Some who enter the cave may choose to leave this reality – to change everything. But some may choose to stay. And choosing to stay, I believe, also changes everything.

I will not write down what they said to one another, for I was not meant to hear it.

But I will say this.

I know that they left the cave, taking each other by the hand.

I know that they went north, for that night I saw the smoke of their campfire rising into a sky scattered with northern lights.

I know in my heart that they went onward to new adventures. It was their way.

But as for me, I did not follow. For I understood at last the power of choosing what you did not think you had chosen before.

I returned to my home, to my grandmother, to the forests where I first met Marketa. I took up my place in the workshop that I now call my own. And whenever I have grown angry, or impatient, or wounded, or wracked with grief – I have reminded myself of the secret of the cave. I have chosen to stay in this life.

That has made all the difference.