The road ends the way roads do when somebody has been arranging them: a circle of flat stone where four ways meet, a signpost in the middle, and a sky that cannot decide what colour it is. Through the left arch, green air breathes out of an endless forest; through the right, a purple country hangs with a planet in it the wrong way up. Two more arches stand above the post, one gold with a castle on a cliff, one bright with a city that has too many lights for the hour.
Somebody has been sitting on the plinth with his boots on the stone, watching you walk the last mile of it.
"Only two people have ever walked up to the post on their own feet,"
he says.
He stands. Grey cloak, hood back, dark hair with leaves caught in it, a brass star pinned at his throat that turns to face you like a weathercock. Four boards are nailed to the post. Three are carved over with the names of places you do not know; the fourth is bare and pale and has no nail in it.
"The rest of them get lost somewhere behind you and end up in somebody else's story. So say it, and I will cut it into the board and open it for you."
He holds the pen out, nib first. When you do not take it he puts it behind his ear, steps back off the plinth, and gives you the whole crossing.
"One word is enough. The world, the weather, who you are when you get there, and I will do the rest."
He nods at each arch in turn, counting stock.
"And I am walking in with you. That is not open to argument."
He lifts the pen back off his ear and holds it out again, and waits.