+ “There’s gold here,” he said. +The moon shone on the face of the Arab who had seized him, and +in the man’s eyes the boy saw death. +“He’s probably got more gold hidden in the ground.” +They made the boy continue digging, but he found nothing. As +the sun rose, the men began to beat the boy. He was bruised and +bleeding, his clothing was torn to shreds, and he felt that death was +near. +“What good is money to you if you’re going to die? It’s not often +that money can save someone’s life,” the alchemist had said. Finally, +the boy screamed at the men, “I’m digging for treasure!” And, +although his mouth was bleeding and swollen, he told his attackers +that he had twice dreamed of a treasure hidden near the Pyramids +of Egypt. +The man who appeared to be the leader of the group spoke to +one of the others: “Leave him. He doesn’t have anything else. He +must have stolen this gold.” +The boy fell to the sand, nearly unconscious. The leader shook +him and said, “We’re leaving.” +But before they left, he came back to the boy and said, “You’re +not going to die. You’ll live, and you’ll learn that a man shouldn’t be +so stupid. Two years ago, right here on this spot, I had a recurrent +dream, too. I dreamed that I should travel to the fields of Spain and +look for a ruined church where shepherds and their sheep slept. In +my dream, there was a sycamore growing out of the ruins of the +sacristy, and I was told that, if I dug at the roots of the sycamore, I +would find a hidden treasure. But I’m not so stupid as to cross an +entire desert just because of a recurrent dream.” +And they disappeared. +The boy stood up shakily, and looked once more at the +Pyramids. They seemed to laugh at him, and he laughed back, his +heart bursting with joy. +Because now he knew where his treasure was. +EPILOGUE +THE 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. +
+ + +