The gypsy woman stood in front of the beggar, wrapped in a red shawl.
"There" -- she said, throwing a few ragged clothes at him, "put them on, and go into the Cave of Bones."
She pointed towards the forest, beyond the village, at the feet of the blue mountain.
"There you will find what you have been looking for."
The beggar, a man in his late fifties, was startled. He picked the unassuming clothes, and put them on to warm his bare limbs.
The gypsy woman grinned in an enigmatic way, and stepped away, leaving him alone in the twilight.
***
The morning after he set out at dawn.
Meandering through the forest for a good while, he then reached the spot where the terrain became steep, and the forest intruded on the mountain wall.
A few twigs snapped under his feet.
There, in front of him, the Cave of Bones yawned like a dark, open mouth.
Rumours had it that people had died there without ever seeing the light again.
Yet, for all he knew, nobody had ever come back to tell the tale. The name told what people assumed.
The beggar drew a long, deep breath.
He would go in. There was no going back. He had already lost everything he had held dear in the world.
If he were to die, he didn't care.
If not, maybe he would find what he had been looking for, as the gypsy woman had said.
At first, he could still feel the morning breeze coming at his shoulders, and see, but as he advanced, he saw less and less. The darkness inside the cave was daunting.
He walked taking little steps, inhaling the damp air of the narrow passageway.
As he advanced, he put his hands on the rock walls, and traced the carved spirals he felt with his fingers.
There were so many intricate, spiralling patterns that he wondered who had been able to make them in such conditions.
At length, he came into a large hall where water dropped from above into a central still pool surrounded by rocks of irregular shapes. By then, he had got used to the shadowy atmosphere, his sight had adjusted, and he could make out more of what he saw.
In the silence, he heard something wading across the pool. He squinted, then he stared, as the form approached: a strange creature came forward holding a sealed wooden casket.
There in front of him stood a tall figure, wrapped in a magenta cloak, a hood drawn over the face.
The figure spoke with an echoing voice.
"Ask for what you want, and open this box."
The beggar hesitated for the first time. The figure stretched out its arms, almost offering him the casket.
***
The moment the beggar unbolted the lid, it flipped open.
Inside, a mirror met his gaze, starting to show images and scenes from his life.
The beggar resisted closing his eyes, or closing the lid and turning away.
He stood transfixed, determined to endure it until he could have an answer to the questions of a life time.
A preternatural light came out of the mirror.
Then, the scenes faded, and the beggar saw how worlds upon worlds had come into existence , and how his world would end, with an old, black sun dying out, new stars blazing into existence in the cosmos, and planets colliding.
At that, he wept. Nothing would stay as he knew it.
In the meanwhile, the figure had shut the casket, and receded into the distance.
The beggar was alone, standing midway through the pool, in the dark cave.
As his sorrows mellowed into compassion, he realized what the spirals on the rock walls represented: they were stars, galaxies and planets dying and coming into being, and he knew then and there the reason why the Cave of Bones was called so.
Whoever entered was stripped down to their bones, losing illusions, and gaining understanding.
Not knowing what to do with himself, he wondered if it would have been better to let himself die there, buried alive.
Little by little, a resolve built up in him, and he retraced his steps out of the pool, back into the passageway, and the open mouth of the cave.
When he came out, the sun was at the zenith, and the beggar felt blissful at its sight. He stared at it, but didn't get blind.
He received "the sight", and from that day onwards, he helped his fellow human beings wandering, and often blundering, along the ways of the world.