Once upon a time, a hero reached a crossroad, and had to pick between love, wealth and death.
The motif of the crossroad shows up in many Eastern European folktales. Sometimes there are three brothers, and the first two fail. Sometimes the hero goes back to the crossroad and completes all the tasks. Evil princesses and talking horses are occasionally involved. All in all, the crossroad is a fixed (save) point in time, it generates different futures depending on the choice, and returning there looks to me very much like time travel.
