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EPILOGUE

A light mist was forming in the Sliva gorge. It was no icy winter fog, but an unexpected breath of spring blowing over the water. It brought the scent of fresh shoots about to pierce the soil and reach toward the sun. The stream, which had been nearly still until a few weeks ago, now burbled and swirled and leapt across boulders. The ice was withdrawing from the banks and the undergrowth, like a vanquished army in retreat.

The forest was waking up a little more every day, stretching its limbs, filling with the first songs of the birds returning from the plains.

To Mathias it seemed that his and Lucia’s and Diego’s and Oliver’s lives were also starting from scratch, like the nature around them. They had learned in school about the cycle of seasons, and now he could observe its effects on the gorge, the place where it had all started, and where the first buds had now begun to blossom.

That was how Mathias pictured himself and his friends. They were no longer standing still, stuck in some awful moment from their past; they had moved on, like clouds racing in the sky, like water streaming over the pebbles, and wind moving between blades of grass. They were like plants that had been hungry for light and had finally found it.

He ran down the path, his lungs filling up with new and vibrant smells. He reached the riverbank and took the familiar route up ladders and across rope bridges. Freed from the winter frost, the wood along the path sounded different beneath his feet; it made the rounded, supple noise Mathias associated with warm weather. The water had changed color, too, resplendent now in deep green and glittering turquoise.

Down there, in that ravine that carved its way past the village, he didn’t feel alone anymore. He stopped with his face tilted up at the light blue sky, conscious of the hundreds of minuscule hearts hiding among the tree branches around him, beating in time with his own.

In that moment, the sun reached its highest point in the sky, and a ray of light lit up the gorge, unleashing a kaleidoscope of colors.

Mathias laughed elatedly and let out a yell that echoed through boulders and crevasses, and his friends responded like a pack of young wolves.

He ran toward them, past the cave and all the way to the waterfall, now thawed and free to rush onward in a cascade of rainbow-colored jets.

Lucia, Diego, and Oliver were waiting for him with their backpacks on their shoulders and a map of the mountain paths between them, ready to set out on a new adventure.