Chapter 38: Epilogue

Cassie Schmidt never returned to the United States. In fact, for the rest of her life, she never left the Republic of Danubia. It was in the Danubian Republic where she would build her life, raise her family, and over time repair the damage to her soul.

Cassie spent her first year in Danube City living with her brother in Spokesman Alexi Havlakt's house. She learned Danubian as she struggled to finish her education and get her diploma. She went to a Danubian high school, because there was no such thing in Danubia as home schooling. She spent her senior year at school slowly shedding her broken American identity and assuming a Danubian one. She came to speak Danubian quite well, better even than her brother. She soon made friends with several Danubian girls, whose personalities and interests were totally different from the group with whom she had been in the U.S. She wore a school uniform that she considered nerdy, but being in a school full of uniformed students helped keep her mind off fashions that might have reminded her of life in the U.S.

Cassie had very little in Upper Danubia in terms of material possessions. She had two suitcases of clothing and memorabilia, and a computer lent to her by the Danubian government. Over time she accumulated textbooks from her school and pictures of her new group of Danubian friends. She had a modest room in the Havlakts' house to herself. When she celebrated her 18th birthday Jason bought her a Danubian bicycle.

The months passed and the first winter came and went. Cassie did not have a single flashback during that entire time. Slowly her confidence came back as she found her place in school and worked out a new relationship with her brother. She came to deeply respect him, and from that respect came admiration. In the U.S. she had never been proud of having him as her brother, but in the Danubian Republic her attitude changed completely. At his very young age he already had accomplished great things in life. She knew that within a few years he would return to the United States and make a real contribution, perhaps even more significant than the one he already had made in Danube City.

During the vacation after she graduated from high school, Cassie Schmidt went with her classmates on a summer work project in the forest reserve overlooking the Rika Chorna Reservoir. The students linked up with a group of students from Rika Chorna and spent the entire summer working and camping together. They maintained service roads and fire breaks, conducted wildlife surveys, and learned about forest management. Cassie felt real satisfaction as she worked to preserve the same forests her father's company had been hoping to clear-cut. She enjoyed the woods, cooking out in the open, getting dirty, skinny dipping with her friends in the cold mountain streams, and looking out over the landscape of seemingly endless rolling green hills and mountains. She loved the villages at the foot of the mountains and the quiet life of the area. When she left at the end of the summer to return to Danube City, she did so with great reluctance. The forest seemed to call her back.

Just before she was scheduled to start university classes in Danube City, Cassie changed the direction of her life and answered that call. Instead of attending the National University in Danube City, she left her brother and the Havlakts to study forestry at the Natural Resources Institute in Rika Chorna. Within two years she was working as an Apprentice for the Danubian Ministry of Natural Resources. Four years after she first settled in Danubia, she was formally sworn in as a forest ranger at age 22. She became a valuable employee for the Ministry because she was the only forest ranger in the area that spoke English. As the years went by Ranger Cassie Schmidt guided countless groups of foreign tourists through the forested mountains overlooking the Rika Chorna Reservoir. She wrote several essays for travel guides and magazine publishers about the Danubian mountains. Later she would marry one of her co-workers and raise a family in the village that served her ranger station. She was content to stay there, at work along the trails with her husband or in the village with her in-laws and kids. She rarely went into Rika Chorna, and was lucky to make it to Danube City even once a year. However, in her world she became well liked and found her Path in Life.

The arrival of Cecilia's little nephew prompted big changes in several people's lives. At first it seemed that where he would be staying would present a dilemma, because Victor Dukov did not have any extra rooms in his house. The child spent several nights sleeping with Cecilia in her room, but no one considered that a permanent solution. He simply had to have his own room.

Apprentice Kimberly Lee-Dolkivna resolved Cecilia's dilemma the week after she and Pedro got back from the U.S. Kim decided that Pedro's presence in Victor Dukov's house was the sign that she needed to grant her client Tiffany Walker permission to get married to Officer Vladik Dukov. Vladik and Tiffany would take up their residence at his father's former house, which in turn would free her room at his uncle's place for Pedro. Thus, not only was Pedro's situation resolved, but also Tiffany's.

Pedro's presence in Danube City gave Prime Minister Vladim Dukov an opportunity to quietly taunt the U.S. Ambassador. Pedro was a U.S. citizen and thus, reasoned the Prime Minister, had the right to attend the exclusive English-speaking school where most of the foreign embassies were sending their children. In fact, if the English school did not welcome Pedro with open arms, the Danubian government would close it and require all diplomats to send their children to Danubian public schools and take their classes in Danubian.

At first the Ambassador balked, given that Pedro was the nephew of a woman who had so badly disrupted the operations of Mega-Town Associates in Eastern Europe. Now here was this kid, straight out of one of the worst housing projects in the U.S., being thrust right into the elite preserve of the diplomats' children. However, in the end he had to relent, under pressure from not only the host government, but also from other embassies that had children attending the school. Within a month of arriving in Danube City, Pedro began attending pre-school with an international mix of English-speaking kids. Two school security guards, who were members of the Danubian Secret Police, watched the preschool to make sure he was treated with respect at all times. Whatever objections parents at the U.S. Embassy might have had to Pedro, those opinions they had to keep to themselves. Dukov made it clear that any disrespect whatsoever to Pedro would result in the immediate closing of the school.

Over the next couple of years Pedro grew very quickly, going through several school uniforms even before making it to the first grade. He already knew how to read and do simple math by the time he was six and was beginning to play soccer. Whatever trauma he might have suffered during Cecilia's two years of being absent seemed not to affect him as he grew up in a quiet and normal environment. He made friends with the children of several diplomats and became popular among his peers. The only detail about Pedro's development that bothered Cecilia was that over time he completely forgot how to speak Spanish. However, she was consoled by the fact his English would be nothing like hers. By the time he returned to the U.S. Pedro spoke with an educated accent, the result of several years of elite schooling.

Jason became a serious cross-country runner during the time he lived in Danube City. He ran various marathons and always finished among the lead runners in any 10-K races. A couple of races he actually won, including a long distance run around the Rika Chorna Reservoir. As was customary in the Danubian Republic, Jason and his fellow runners always competed naked, except for their shoes and socks. Jason thus was living his dream, sprinting across the open countryside with his body completely uninhibited by clothing.

In the mornings he usually went jogging around the National University, and only during the coldest days did he wear anything. It took a while for Cassie to get used to the sight of her brother dashing out the front door and running down the street with nothing on, but this was Danubia, and things here were done differently than they were done in the U.S.

Upon attending his sister's graduation from high school and watching her depart for her summer work project, Jason decided to return to the Temple of the Ancients and request permission to resume performing public penance. Jason's motivations were complicated and even he could not articulate why he wanted to return to wearing a collar. However, it was obvious to the English-speaking priestess that Jason's Path in Life, as long as he was living in the Danubian Republic, was to perform penance. For the second time in less than a year Jason watched the Temple fire consume his clothing and left the building with his body completely uncovered and a collar around his neck.

Jason's decision to return to a life of public penance was his own and had nothing to do with the fantasy that Cecilia had for him the year before. In fact, because Jason's public penance was something that he alone had decided on performing; Cecilia understood that part of his life was not something she had any control over. Jason had taken the collar because he felt that it was necessary to come to terms with his own place in the world. By the second summer Cecilia knew enough of Danubian culture to understand that it would be inappropriate to ask her boyfriend any questions about what he was doing or how long he planned to stay collared. Jason never volunteered any information, but secretly he had taken an oath to keep his collar and remain undressed as long as he remained in the Danubian Republic. He packed his clothing into his suitcase, knowing that it would be several years before he would allow himself to wear any of it.

With that Jason returned to the Socrates Club, inviting Cecilia as his guest. The couple became regular customers and always sat with Tiffany and Vladik, listening to the latest musical endeavors of "Socrates' Mistresses". The heart of the Danubian musical scene became a regular part of Cecilia's life, because of her boyfriend's membership in the club.

In the fall, still completely naked except for the Temple collar, Jason continued his studies at the National University and within three years had his Danubian undergraduate degree. Through a special agreement with his university in Chicago his classes were recognized in the U.S. and applied to a degree there as well. Burnside wrote him to tell him that he would have to take one final semester of classes to get his diploma in the U.S., but that simply was because the university required any graduating student to attend the final semester on campus. The same rule would apply to Cecilia, but more than anything else in both their cases it was a formality.