Before I realized what was happening, I was going to the religion roads by default, without ever making a decision to. Religion? I wasn’t optimistic. But … was it possible there was something I’d missed? Maybe here in Skia, Thuros—whatever—maybe here religion would finally make sense. So far nothing else had. What did I have to lose?

As we started our descent, we paused at a break in the pine trees and gazed down into the dusty valley, more like a gulch. I was amazed to see dozens upon dozens, if not hundreds of roads leading out into the distance, as many roads as there were directions. My chest tightened.

“There are so many roads,” I said. “As many as on the other side.”

“Perhaps more,” Joshua said. “But they all have something you can benefit from.”

“Is it possible to find … the truth?” I asked Joshua.

“That’s a lifetime pursuit,” Joshua said. “You need to look far and wide to find bits of the truth that you can weave all together into something that satisfies you.”

I pointed at the long narrow shadow reaching to the west. “What causes the shadow?” I asked him.

He stared at it, smiling nervously. “Perhaps I’ll show you later. For now we should go forward.”

“Forward.” I thought about the message on the cave wall. But forward to where? Down below? To which road? Was there such a thing as truth? Would one of these roads take me there? I felt a glimmer of hope. Was I right to hope? Or was I just a fool?

Shad walked behind us, buzzing around like a gadfly, making irritating comments now and then just to remind us he was still there. Strangely, I couldn’t really hear most of his words, and those I heard I couldn’t make sense of.

What’s wrong with him?

We came to a stream running down from the hills in a deeply dug canal with steep slippery slopes on each side. Near the stream we hooked up on a path where we came to a quiet community of people. There a three-sided wood building, open in the front, had candles, incense, robes, books, altars, and offering boxes on display. I kept blinking my eyes because all the colors seemed muted, indistinct, as if everything were beige, like a sun-bleached stage prop. We approached a man in a red robe, meditating in the lovely silence.

“Which religion is true?” I asked him, whispering, as if I didn’t want to admit the question had come from me. “And how can we know?”

“We practice all religions here,” he said, “for we see truth in all of them.”

“And how do I know what to embrace and what to reject?”

“Embrace what you wish and reject what you wish. It’s yours to choose.”

“Yes, I understand I can choose, but what I mean is, what should I choose?”