Shawsh pulled me into a long, detailed, and one-sided conversation about his work that I couldn’t help but feel I had to listen to if I wanted to keep reading through scrolls in his library. His sculpture was beautiful. I focused my attention more on it, so that his enthusiastic stream of words didn’t grate so much in the background.

Six rivers of multi hued blue water flowed over the lip of a perfectly circular hole and into darkness. Shawsh had fitted half a sphere of smooth clay under the floor of the cavern to block the view of where the rivers would have flowed to as well as give him easy space to attach supports to the rounded sculpture. The top of the sculpture was covered in a abstract, delicate dome that hinted at the top of the cavern and the night sky that had hung there. It swirled around with tiny painted stars and openings so that the viewer could see the scene inside.

Not everything was as I had described it, however. Rather than the hidden pathway down to the entrance with the Beloved’s statues that ran along the side of the hole, Shawsh had changed it to a staircase that marched across the expanse of the hole to an obvious entrance on the other side. No statues flanked the entrance either. Only the twin watching eyes carved over the entrance remained.

When I interrupted him to point the changes out, Shawsh’s excitement settled into a more distant, quiet mood. “Didn’t want to give away Her secrets to anyone who looks on, so I took a few artistic liberties.” He indicated the space lacking statues. “And it’s best not to make the Beloved’s likeness without Her permission.”

I could understand that. Better the changes than the goddess’s anger even if I hadn’t told him where the cavern was in the Flickermark or how Fellen and I had found it. This way if anyone saw his work and then stumbled into the cavern they would have to still find the hidden path themselves.

Not sure what else to say, I nodded slowly before complimenting him. “The rivers are really realistic.”

The comment felt weird on my tongue, but I felt like I should offer him something after how how excited he had been to show me his work—and I wanted to make sure I stayed on his good side.

Shawsh grinned. “Good! Good. Clara helped me get the colors just right, and I still need to do a few touch ups here and there on the dome, but I’m glad you like it.”

I nodded again, a little awkward. “I should keep looking now.”

“Oh, of course! What were you looking to read?”

I held out a hand to stop him as he made to get up. “Not reading today. I need to find the last stone.”

Clara let out a sigh full of exasperation and peered at me around her scroll. “The others already looked. What makes you think it’s here?”

I crossed my arms. “This is the last significant place in the Seed Landing where a stone hasn’t been found. It has to be here.”

She rolled her eyes and focused back on her scroll. “Be quiet about it. Shawsh and I could hardly focus with the way they were scrambling around last time.”

I scowled at her and got up to start my search in the back of the library. I worked my way from section to section. Checking the floor, walls, cords holding the scrolls, and the scrolls themselves. I was also careful about checking the pedestals holding Shawsh’s creations, but as far as I could tell he hadn’t stuck a stone into any of his works. It was slow work, slower than checking the viewing platform had been with all the extra things I needed to look over. I did my best to peer at the scrolls that were out of my reach, but I wasn’t ready to ask Shawsh to look for me, if he was even willing to help, and part of me didn’t want to believe that whoever had hidden the stones would have put them where we couldn’t get to them. Even the one under the thin paths had been reachable, if idiotically placed.

By the time I was about halfway through the library it was time for the midday meal. When I looked over to check on Shawsh and Clara I saw that the other girl was gone. I didn’t like that I hadn’t heard her leave, but when she returned a little while later I realized why.

Clara stepped from one of the shadows in the library holding two bowls of soup and flat bread. She ignored my slight surprise as she handed Shawsh his portion of the food. I had known she was probably using the shadow paths to travel to the library, but it was one thing to know that and another to see the mystical paths used for something as mundane as meal retrieval. It also made me wonder if familiarity with a certain shadows or places helped with accuracy, given how she had been a little bit off when she had helped take us through the shadows for the game of Hunter’s Quarry.

Seeing the soup also reminded me of my own growing hunger, so I left the library to go finish off the food Wren had brought that morning. Sitting on bench in the sunlight as I staved off my hunger also helped to curb my growing frustration. I didn’t like that I hadn’t found a single stone so far just as I didn’t want to think about what would happen if I didn’t find anything in the library. Trapped without anywhere else significant to look.

I shook the ugly thought out of my head. I had already spent more than enough time today spiraling through unhelpful thoughts. One way or another that stone would be found. It was just a matter of time.

When I returned to the library, Shawsh was checking over his collection and I shot him a dark look that he didn’t seem to notice. He was going through the areas I had already gone through looking for the stone, but I knew I hadn’t damaged a single scroll. Clara was also doing something new. Rather than reading a scroll or drawing on her tablet she seemed to be working her way through different stances for hand to hand fighting, like the stretching poses Rawley had taught me. It was the most active I had ever seen her.

I went back to methodically working my way through the library though I had to step around Clara when I went to check middle open area for the sake of being thorough. She didn’t make any allowances for my presence other than sharing an annoyed look with me when she stepped into my space to complete one of her forms. I was tempted to trip her, but thought better of it with Shawsh’s newest sculpture so near.

I looked until I reached the front entrance, until the sun was setting outside and I had gone over every inch of the library that I could think of. Shawsh assured me that there wasn’t a stone hidden in the scrolls overhead or in the ceiling; Chirp had already been sent to look even if the old librarian didn’t appreciate having a bird in his library. I had checked all five areas of the library from the ancient texts to the fighting section to the scrolls with the Named and the failures, and I had found nothing. Not even an errant, misshapen stone.

And I had nowhere else to look.

I pressed my lips tight together to hold back a growl of frustration. The others could still search the rest of the Seed Landing, but I was stuck where I was unless I could suddenly pretend that the garden meant nothing to me—which I didn’t have the stomach for yet.

I could comb back over the library and the viewing platform, the shrine and the paths between, make sure I hadn’t missed anything, and I would, but I didn’t have to like the tediousness of it. I left the pair alone so I didn’t have to look at the place of my most recent failure. I’d need to return soon, for something distracting to read, if nothing else, but for now it was more pressing to get some distance from the place.

I strode up the ramp from the library, across the gathering space, and down the path that led back the area with the bench and my things. Only to find Prevna opposite of the bench chipping off ice from one of the ice vines to refill her water pouch. She shifted to see me when I stumbled to a halt.

She rested a hip against the railing. “Find anything?”

“No.” My tone was harsher than I meant it to be.

She didn’t flinch. Instead, Prevna gestured to a new small new package sitting on the bench.

“Food’s there.” She gave me a long look, up and down. “Do you want me to stay or go?”

I didn’t really want company but I also knew that if I was left on my own I would only brood which wouldn’t accomplish anything. And I needed to accomplish something, anything to distract from the lack of what I normally had.

“Your choice.”

That knowing, somewhat smug smile brightened her face even if it didn’t reach her eyes as much as it normally did. “As if you could do without me.”

I moved to sit on the bench and scowled at her. “I’m fine on my own.”

She pushed off the railing and settled down next to me, plucking the bundle of food I had just picked up out of my hands. “Who brought this again?”

I didn’t deign to answer that trap of a question and instead grabbed the food back. She didn’t try very hard to fend me off. After I got the cord that was keeping the bundle closed untied I asked her, “Where do you think the last marble is?”

Prevna leaned back on her hands so that she could stare up at the pine needles overhead as she thought. “The library makes the most sense, but none of us have found one there, so unless someone found it and is keeping it hidden, it was probably hidden somewhere else. Maybe in one of the pine needle beds or this ice vine area?”

She gave me a side long look.

I started to eat the food she had brought. “I didn’t just mean on this side of the Seed Landing.”

She shrugged. “It seems we already found marbles in pretty much all of the important places on the other side. I guess that two marbles could have been hidden in one place but that doesn’t line up with what was found so far.”

I gave her a small nod. “I’ll look in the needle beds tomorrow. The lighting isn’t good enough now.”

Prevna stayed until I finished eating what she had brought and then she gathered up the dishes and cloth from the morning with the bowl and covering from this evening.

“I’ll take these back to the cooks.”

I watched her leave before I worked on my weapons training in an attempt to make myself exhausted so that I would sleep better than I had the night before. Tomorrow I could search through the pine needle bed benches and along this whole branch for the stone. Perhaps by the time I found it the others would have Andhi convinced to use her stone with the ones we already found so we could open the hidden passageway right away. Or someone else would find the final stone.

I stabbed my spear into the air with more force than necessary. I’d find the final stone. I didn’t want others to be able to point out that I had no part in my advancement to becoming a Sprout. I’d find the stone and we’d put them in their spots before drinking from the shadows. It was only a matter of time.