5: TERRIBLE TREASURE

She did not mind. Indeed, she was glad, for among the greatest gifts she had to give her children were the questions themselves. 

So she replied:

“Beloved children, the world you will be entering this Gifting Day is a world of time and place, a world where a choice once made cannot be unmade. With each door you open in every moment, all the others in that moment vanish, and there is only the one you have chosen. And when you choose, the path opens before you and that door, too, is gone. 

"There are no doors but those you see before you, in this moment. All the doors through which you have already passed are gone, and those through which you have yet to pass do not exist. For you create the path with every choice you make. You cannot choose in any moment that is Then. You can only choose in the moment that is Now. Nor can you turn back. For every choice is a step along the way, and the way leads only forward, to new gifts, new doors, new choices, and, finally, home.”

The children murmured, understanding. But one voice rose above the others. 

“Mother, now we hold the key of choice you have given us. But can we not choose not to choose? Can we not choose to cast the key aside, and open no doors, follow no path?”

The mother said, laughing, “Child, your asking will take you far in the world of Gifting Day. Try it, and see what happens.”

So the child tried to cast its key aside and found in fact that the key was by some strange magic now melded to its fingers, so that the child could not shake the key loose, and thus could not help but hold it fast.

All the children saw this, and thought about it, and looked at their own keys, also melded fast to their fingers, and knew somehow that this, the key of choice, was the mother’s greatest legacy ... and their own most terrible treasure.