The Alchemist

EPILOGUE 
T
HE BOY REACHED THE SMALL, ABANDONED CHURCH JUST
as night was 
falling. The sycamore was still there in the sacristy, and the stars 
could still be seen through the half-destroyed roof. He remembered 
the time he had been there with his sheep; it had been a peaceful 
night…except for the dream. 
Now he was here not with his flock, but with a shovel. 
He sat looking at the sky for a long time. Then he took from his 
knapsack a bottle of wine, and drank some. He remembered the 
night in the desert when he had sat with the alchemist, as they 
looked at the stars and drank wine together. He thought of the many 
roads he had traveled, and of the strange way God had chosen to 
show him his treasure. If he hadn’t believed in the significance of 
recurrent dreams, he would not have met the Gypsy woman, the 
king, the thief, or…“Well, it’s a long list. But the path was written in 
the omens, and there was no way I could go wrong,” he said to 
himself. 
He fell asleep, and when he awoke the sun was already high. He 
began to dig at the base of the sycamore. 
“You old sorcerer,” the boy shouted up to the sky. “You knew the 
whole story. You even left a bit of gold at the monastery so I could 
get back to this church. The monk laughed when he saw me come 
back in tatters. Couldn’t you have saved me from that?” 
“No,” he heard a voice on the wind say. “If I had told you, you 
wouldn’t have seen the Pyramids. They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” 

---

The boy smiled, and continued digging. Half an hour later, his 
shovel hit something solid. An hour later, he had before him a chest 
of Spanish gold coins. There were also precious stones, gold masks 
adorned with red and white feathers, and stone statues embedded 
with jewels. The spoils of a conquest that the country had long ago 
forgotten, and that some conquistador had failed to tell his children 
about. 
The boy took out Urim and Thummim from his bag. He had used 
the two stones only once, one morning when he was at a 
marketplace. His life and his path had always provided him with 
enough omens. 
He placed Urim and Thummim in the chest. They were also a