In a pile of raked leaves you will find an old compass,

covered in runish numbers adding up to infinity.

You will discover

(once you have promised a lock of your mother's hair to the pawnbroker in exchange for the key)

that it is filled with fresh snow that burns against your fingertips and leaves tattoos of planets spiraling on your skin.

You will leave,

following the trembling needle to a priestess living under the money changer's table in a rainforest marketplace.

She will give you earrings made of iris and marble tile.

You will follow her, for a time, until she falls asleep.

You will meet a medic trapped in eternal questing conversation with a white and faceless shark,

and together they will tell you stories of the beetles in the sky

that make the lightning come.

You will save a ghost from its handler,

surrounded by crashing cascades of fine china as the two of you run hand in hand,

gasping in great sobbing lungfuls and begging shelter in the fox's house til morning.

For this you will trade your reflection and a spool of thread.

The view of the moon from her window will be like cloth and silver sand.

You will leave to see caverns of crystal with pieces of the sky trapped inside,

strange stones in the desert

and kings petrified in the hearts of forests older than the universe.

You will climb mountains that reach so high into the dark you can see the steel in the stars,

nebulae crashing like burning oceans

against the part of you that is the size of the sun.

You will leave, and I will not follow you.

But when you come back, you will sing me your ancient songs.