Elowyn spread the pressed flower on the elder's table and asked him to name it. He would not even look. The petals were pale and thin, almost see-through, and they still held a faint smell after all these years. She had found the flower in her grandmother's journal. No living plant matched it. Only one place could explain it: Thessara, the lost garden that was said to hold every plant driven to extinction. Elowyn wanted to press every rare bloom she found into her herbarium and record what each one had once been used for. But she could not begin without knowing where to look. The elder finally spoke. "Thessara is a story for children," he said. "There is no garden. There never was." He pushed her old maps back across the table. Elowyn had studied those maps for months. She read their symbols better than their words. She needed someone who remembered the real tales to point her toward the first marker. This man was the last in the village who might. And he had just closed the door. "He's not going to help you," Tavian said. He leaned in the doorway with his mapmaker's satchel on one shoulder. Elowyn had known him for years; he chased lost places the way she chased lost plants. He crossed the room and looked at her spread of maps. "You keep reading that mark as water," he said, tapping one symbol. "It's roots." Elowyn stared at it. For four months she had read that same symbol as rivers. She had traced streams that led nowhere. "Roots," she repeated. "Not rivers." "Roots run under things," Tavian said. "So your garden isn't marked by water on the surface. It's marked by what grows below." He unrolled his own map beside hers. The two symbols matched. His route and her flower pointed to the same place. "You don't need him to believe," Tavian said. "You needed the mark read right. That, I can do." The elder watched them from his chair. He said nothing. He did not have to. Elowyn no longer needed his memory. She had the symbol, and now she had someone who understood it. She rolled her maps and slid them into her satchel. "Then we follow the roots," she said. Tavian tucked one hand in his pocket. "There's a catch," he said. "The mark isn't near the village. It sits past the old stonework, where my compass won't hold still." He lifted the compass on its cord. The needle spun and would not settle. Elowyn looked at the wild needle. The elder had refused her, and it no longer mattered. She had a direction at last. But her direction led somewhere the ground itself seemed to twist a compass in circles. She stood, ready to walk toward it.

Elowyn spread her flower map book open on a flat rock. She and Tavian had walked half a day toward the old stonework. The gray arch waited ahead. Now she needed the page that showed the route past it. She turned to where that page should be. A ragged edge remained. The page was gone. She checked her satchel twice. She shook out the book. Nothing. Without that page, she could not confirm which turn led past the stonework. Tavian's compass was useless here; the needle already twitched and spun. The map was all she had. A small laugh came from the rocks above. A godling perched there, no taller than her knee. Charms and bells hung from his sash, so many they looked ridiculous, and she knew him at once. Tairo. He collected lost things and enjoyed the trouble that came with them. He and Elowyn had traded needling jokes for years, half friends, half rivals. "You dropped something," Tairo said. He held her missing page between two fingers. He waved it slowly, like a fan. "You took it," Elowyn said. "I found it," he said. "On the ground. Practically abandoned." A bell chimed as he shifted. "It has lovely little flowers. I like flowers." Elowyn climbed toward him. He did not run. He watched her come with that crooked smile. She knew grabbing would fail; he moved without sound when he wanted to. "Name your price," she said. "A trade," Tairo said. "That's fair. You keep things too. I've seen your bag." He tilted his head at her satchel and its dangling charms. "Give me one keepsake worth keeping. Then the page is yours." Elowyn opened her satchel. She had beads, a cracked shell, a brass key. Then her fingers found the small crescent moon charm on her belt. It was old and plain, but she liked its weight. Tairo's eyes fixed on it. He collected charms above all. "This one," she said. She unhooked it and held it up. Tairo's smile widened. He reached, but Elowyn pulled back. "Page first," she said. He considered this, then set the page in her free hand. Elowyn placed the moon charm in his palm. He turned it over, delighted, and hung it beside a dozen bells. "Pleasure doing business," he said. "You'll want that page. The turn past the stonework is not the one it looks like." He grinned. "But that's all I'll say." He stepped behind a rock and was gone. Elowyn smoothed the page against the book. The ink lines were whole. She traced the root symbol Tavian had taught her past the gray arch. The path did not go straight, as she had guessed. It curled left, toward the stonework's shadow. "He was right," she said. "The route bends." Tavian looked at his spinning compass, then at the arch. Beyond it, the ground shimmered. They had the page. Now they had to walk into the place that broke every compass.

Past the gray arch, the path opened into a flower-draped grove. A twisted tree leaned over the trail, its blossoms hanging low. Elowyn stepped onto the pale stones, holding the map page in one hand. Tavian followed, his compass spinning uselessly at his chest. The route curled left, exactly as the page showed. For the first time in days, Elowyn felt close. Then a bell chimed above her. Tairo sat in the crook of the twisted tree, legs swinging, the crescent moon charm she had traded him now hanging among his others. He was the godling who collected lost things, and he had trailed them here hoping the grove held more. "You found the pretty garden," he said. "It drops things. I can feel it." "It's not lost if it's mine," Elowyn said. She pressed the page against her chest. Tairo dropped from the tree without a sound. "Everything's a little lost here," he said. He nodded at the shifting ground, the spinning compass. "Even that page. It doesn't know which way is which." Elowyn looked down. The ink lines on the page had begun to blur. The grove's strange air softened the marks, the same way it broke Tavian's needle. Soon the route would fade. Tairo watched her notice it, delighted, one small hand already reaching. She had a choice. Guard the page and lose it, or read it fast and let it go. Elowyn knelt and spread the page on a flat stone. She traced the root symbol left, past the tree, toward a gap in the blossoms. She memorized the turn. She counted the paces the map marked. Then she looked up at Tairo. "Take it," she said, and held the page out. Tairo froze. He had expected a fight. "You're giving it to me," he said slowly. "You wanted a lost thing," Elowyn said. "It's fading anyway. I already have what's on it." She tapped her own head. He took the page with both hands, turning it over, testing it for a trick. Finding none, his crooked smile faltered. "That's no fun," he muttered. But he tucked it into his sash, beside the moon charm. "Then we're even," Elowyn said. "You have your keepsake. I have my way through." Tavian let out a low laugh. "She read you better than the map," he told the godling. Tairo hopped back onto the twisted tree. "The turn you saw," he said, "there's a bloom past it. Small. Pale petals. You'll want that one." A bell rang. He was gone. Elowyn went still. Small, pale petals. The flower from her grandmother's journal. She looked at the gap in the blossoms where the route bent left. Her herbarium waited empty in her satchel, and the first true page was one turn away. She started walking, Tavian close behind, into the fading grove.

Elowyn made the turn past the twisted tree. The blossoms thinned, and there it stood in a patch of pale light. One small flower with translucent petals. The same flower pressed in her grandmother's journal. Her hands shook as she opened her satchel and drew out her empty herbarium. She knelt and reached for the stem. "You'll want to stop there," said a soft voice. A tiny godling stood between Elowyn and the bloom. Her head was too large for her small body, crowned with pale flowers and teal leaves. Her eyes were enormous and calm. Elowyn had heard of her from Tavian. This was Thessalyne, who tended the boundary between the ordinary world and Wonderwyld's sacred places. She had guarded groves for centuries. And she did not look angry, which somehow made Elowyn more careful. "I only want one bloom," Elowyn said. "To press. To keep." "Everyone only wants one," Thessalyne said. Her voice stayed gentle. "I lost a whole grove that way, one bloom at a time, while I slept. This one does not leave for nothing." She folded her tiny hands. "You may take it. But you must trade something you value. The garden remembers what things cost." Tavian caught up behind her. "She means it," he murmured. "The softer she talks, the more she means it." Elowyn opened her satchel wider. She looked at what she carried. Turquoise rings. A celestial medallion. Charms she had gathered across Wonderwyld. She had already given her crescent moon charm to Tairo. Each thing here was small and dear. Then she stopped. Her fingers found the journal itself. Her grandmother's journal, with the pressed flower still inside. The faint smell that had started everything. This was the most valuable thing she owned. "You want what I value most," Elowyn said slowly. She lifted the journal out. "This is it. But if I trade the journal, I lose the flower that sent me here." Thessalyne watched, patient as a season. Elowyn opened the journal instead. She peeled the old pressed flower from its page. Its petals were thin as breath. "I'll trade you this," she said. "The first of its kind I ever found. I'll keep the empty page and the memory of its smell. You keep the flower." Thessalyne's huge eyes softened. She took the old bloom in both hands, as if receiving something living. "You understand cost," she said. "Most people offer me trinkets." She stepped aside. Elowyn cut the fresh flower and pressed it into her herbarium. The first true page. She smoothed the translucent petals flat. But her grandmother's original was gone now, given away. Thessalyne lingered as they rose to leave. "The boundary is thinning," she said quietly. "Paths open that should not. If you keep gathering blooms, you will reach places even I have lost." She looked at Elowyn's herbarium. "Guard that better than I guarded my grove."

Back at her cottage, Elowyn spread the herbarium open on her worktable. The fresh bloom lay pressed on its page. But the page stayed unfinished. Beside it sat her grandmother's floral journal, opened to the notes about this flower. The notes made no sense. Her grandmother had not written plant names. She had drawn tiny symbols instead. Loops, dots, a curved line like a hook. Elowyn had memorized every one. She still could not read them. "You look like someone who has stared too long at one thing," Tavian said. He leaned in the doorway, satchel over his shoulder. He crossed to the table and studied the symbols. "These aren't map marks. I'd know those." He tapped the hooked line. "This one almost looks like a plant. But it isn't any I've charted." "They're uses," Elowyn said. "They have to be. She wrote what the flower was good for. Food, medicine, something. But I can't match them to anything." She pressed her palms flat on the table. Without the uses, the page was just a picture. Her whole herbarium meant nothing if she only pressed blooms and never learned what they did. A small voice spoke from the windowsill. "That one means waking." Elowyn turned. A tiny godling perched among her potted seedlings. Leaves grew from her head like hair, and a coral flower bloomed at her crown. Morrowyn. Elowyn's friend, the godling of small beginnings. Elowyn had not heard her arrive. Morrowyn was watching a seedling, not the journal. "Waking?" Elowyn said. Morrowyn pointed one small finger at the hooked symbol. "That's a seed shape. Half-open." She tilted her head. "Your grandmother drew growing words. Not people words." She paused, distracted by a curling sprout. "Gods write like this. I read it every day." Elowyn's breath caught. "You can read them?" "Some." Morrowyn hopped down onto the table. She was smaller than the journal. She walked across the page, touching each symbol. "This dot means quiet. This loop means it holds sleep in a thing. The hook means it ends the sleep." She looked up. "Your flower wakes seeds that won't wake. It starts what has stopped." Elowyn grabbed her pen. She copied the meanings beside each symbol, her hand steady now. Wakes dormant seeds. Ends long sleep. The page filled. For the first time, the herbarium held not just a bloom, but what the bloom could do. Then she stopped. Her pen hovered. "Seeds that won't wake," she repeated. She thought of extinct plants. Silphium. Every lost species she wanted to find. A flower that ended long sleep could wake seeds thought dead forever. Morrowyn looked at her with wide amber eyes. "I have a seed that won't wake," she said softly. "It's dying. Slow." She twisted her small hands. "Your grandmother knew how to wake sleepers. But your flower is only one bloom. And I don't know if one is enough."

Elowyn set down her pen. Morrowyn stood on the journal, small and worried. The words on the page still glistened. Wakes dormant seeds. Ends long sleep. Elowyn wanted to press more blooms, to fill her herbarium and find the lost plants she had chased for months. But Morrowyn had asked her something first. "Show me the seed," Elowyn said. Morrowyn led her to a glass jar resting on the windowsill. Inside, a pale seed sat in soft moss, glowing faintly. Tiny blossoms circled its base. "It called the loudest," Morrowyn said. "So I stayed." She touched the glass with one small hand. "But it won't wake. And my season ends soon." Her voice dropped. "When a seed dies in my care, I shrink. I go back smaller." Elowyn understood then. This was not a favor. It was Morrowyn's whole self, closing like a door. Tavian leaned in the doorway. "You only have one bloom," he said quietly. "If it doesn't work, you can't press it into your book after. You'd lose both." He was right. The bloom was the crown of her herbarium. Using it might waste it and stall everything. Elowyn looked at the sleeping seed. Then at Morrowyn's amber eyes. Her grandmother had drawn waking words for a reason. Not to fill a page. To use them. "A picture of a cure isn't a cure," she said. She lifted the fresh bloom from her worktable. Morrowyn opened the jar. Elowyn crushed one petal between her fingers and let the pale dust fall onto the seed. Nothing happened. Tavian shifted. Morrowyn held her breath. Then the seed's glow brightened. A thin green thread pushed from its tip. It uncurled, slow but certain. The moss stirred around it. Morrowyn made a small sound, half laugh, half cry. "It woke," she whispered. "It started." She pressed her face to the glass. For the first time she looked steady, not shrinking. "You spent your bloom." "I did," Elowyn said. The herbarium page sat open behind her, holding only the dried, spent flower. It would never be whole now. She had traded her prize to end one seed's sleep. But Morrowyn turned to her, eyes wide with something new. "You kept your side," she said. "So I keep mine." She climbed back onto the journal and tapped a fresh row of symbols near the spine. "These are directions. To another bloom. Rarer than the first." Her small finger traced a curved line. "It grows where the boundary is thinnest. Where few things live." Elowyn copied the symbols with a shaking hand. Her one bloom was gone. But the path opened again, deeper than before. Tavian read over her shoulder and frowned. "Thinnest boundary," he said. "That's the dangerous part." Elowyn closed the journal. She had saved a dying seed. Now she had to walk toward a place that might not let her leave.

Elowyn had memorized the grove path in daylight. A leaning stone. A split root. A tree shaped like a cupped hand. She and Tavian set out toward the rarer bloom, following the marks she held in her head. Then the mist rose. It came from the thinning boundary ahead, pale and thick. Within minutes it swallowed the split root and the leaning stone. Elowyn stopped. She could not see the next landmark. Without a light, her memorized route was useless. "I can't find the markers," she said. "The mist covers everything." Tavian pulled the compass from his cord. The needle spun in slow circles. "That's no help here," he said. "We're close to the boundary. The needle's drunk." He tucked it away. "We need to see the ground, not the sky." Elowyn opened her satchel. She dug past beads and charms and dried petals. Her fingers found a small glass bottle from Morrowyn's windowsill. Inside floated the seed she had watched wake days ago, glowing faint green in the moss. She had carried it without thinking. Now it was the only light she had. "That's it," Tavian said. He crouched beside her. "Hold it low." Elowyn lowered the bottle near the path. The soft glow pushed back a small circle of mist. There, at the edge of the light, she saw the split root she had memorized. She stepped toward it. The glow found the leaning stone next. One mark at a time, the seed lit the route she had lost. They walked slowly. Elowyn swept the bottle side to side, reading the ground like her old maps. Symbols she trusted more than words. A curve of roots here. A flat stone there. Each landmark surfaced from the mist, then sank behind them. The path ended at a wall of light. Cascading towers rose from a coast split in two halves. On one side, sunlit sand and daisies. On the other, a moonlit dreamscape of coral arches and hanging crystal drips. Giant pale flowers glowed inside it. Between the two halves ran a shimmering seam, like water standing upright. "The boundary," Tavian said. "This is the thinnest place." He looked at the seam and did not step closer. "Morrowyn's bloom is past it." Elowyn raised the glowing seed. Its light reached the seam and bent, pulled toward the moonlit side. The mist parted there, showing an opening in the towers. A doorway between the coast and the dream. "The seed points through," she said. Tavian frowned. "It knows where it came from. That doesn't mean we can follow and come back." Elowyn looked at the split coast. She had found the path. But the path had led her here, to a door that opened one way. The rarer bloom waited on the far side of the seam. So did the question of return. She closed her hand around the warm bottle and stepped toward the doorway of light.

Elowyn stepped through the doorway of light. The moonlit side pulled at her like a slow tide. Ahead, past the coral arches and hanging crystal drips, a single pale bloom glowed among the flower-shaped towers. Tavian followed close behind her. Then a small voice spoke from the seam itself. "You dropped through and forgot to pay the toll." Tairo sat on a low arch, legs swinging, his sash heavy with bells and charms. Elowyn knew him well. He was the godling who collected lost things, and she had traded him her crescent moon charm once for a map page. He grinned like they were old friends, which, in a strange way, they were. "You followed us through," she said. "This place lost so much," Tairo said. He waved a hand at the moonlit towers. "Someone has to collect it." He hopped down and stood between her and the bloom. "But that flower isn't free. Give me a keepsake, and I'll step aside." Tavian folded his arms. "She's already traded away half of what she carried." "Then she knows how this works," Tairo said, unbothered. He rested a finger against his cheek and waited. Elowyn opened her satchel. Her fingers moved past dried petals and beads. She had so little left. The map page was gone. The crescent charm was gone. Her grandmother's pressed flower was gone. She had learned that value meant giving something up. Her hand closed on a small necklace she'd found on the sunlit shore days ago. Muted teal cord, a creamy spiral shell, tiny brass leaves and stars. She had meant to keep it. "This," she said, and held it out. Tairo's eyes brightened. He took the shell necklace and lifted it to the moonlight. The pearly shell caught the glow and hummed faintly, like a held breath. "A quiet thing," he said. "I like quiet things. They stay lost the longest." He looped it over his sash, among the bells. "Now move," Elowyn said. Tairo stepped aside with a small bow. "The bloom is yours. But you gave me shoreline." He tapped the shell. "This came from the sunlit half. Now it's on the moonlit side, with me." He smiled. "Careful what you carry across. The boundary keeps score." Elowyn didn't wait to ask what he meant. She walked to the pale bloom and pressed it gently between the pages of her herbarium. Its petals were thin, almost see-through, and warm. Another forgotten flower saved. She let out a slow breath. When she turned back, the seam behind them had changed. The shimmering wall no longer showed the sunlit coast. It showed only more moonlit towers, folding deeper into the dream. The doorway they'd entered was gone. Tavian looked at the empty place where the sunlit shore had been. "He warned us," he said quietly. "We carried something across. Now the way back is closed."

The doorway home was gone. Elowyn pressed her palm to the shimmering wall, but it showed only more moonlit towers folding into the dark. Tavian checked his compass. The needle spun and would not stop. "No help there," he said. They stood at the base of the coral arches with nowhere to walk but deeper in. Somewhere ahead a low humming pulled at the air, like a hundred voices caught mid-song. They followed it. The path opened into a wide hall of hanging crystal drips, each one glowing faint lavender. Inside sat the largest creature Elowyn had ever seen. He was soft and pale, covered in thick fur, with ears that swept out and curled up at the tips. Shelves of humming records circled him. Elowyn knew him from Wonderwyld stories. This was Mallow, keeper of The Dreamery, the gentle giant who sorted every dream that drifted loose. She had never expected to find him this far past the boundary. Mallow turned slowly. His warm smile did not falter. "Two travelers," he rumbled. "You look like people who lost the way back. That's a heavy thing to carry." He patted a spot on the floor. "Sit. Rest first. Worry sorts better after sitting." "We can't rest," Elowyn said. "The doorway sealed behind us. We need another crossing home, and we don't know a single path here." Mallow nodded, as if she'd asked for tea. He lifted the glowing orb from his sash and turned it in his huge hands. "The records have been slipping," he said. "Something pulls their threads loose. The threads run toward the sunlit side. Where they go, a crossing must be." He pointed one padded finger down a corridor lined with darker crystal. "That way. But the pull grows stronger as you walk. It takes things. It nearly took a whole dream from me last night." Elowyn opened her satchel. She had almost nothing left to trade or lose. Her herbarium, her grandmother's journal, a few dried petals. "If it takes things," she said slowly, "then I have to give it something willingly. Before it chooses for me." Mallow watched her think. "That's the kindest way," he said. "Better to hand over the coat than have it pulled off your back." Elowyn walked the dark corridor. The humming rose. The pull began to tug at her sleeves, her hair, the ribbons woven through her curls. Ahead, the crystal thinned into a pale seam of sunlight. It was a crossing, faint but real. As she stepped toward it, the pull reached into her satchel and lifted her grandmother's journal into the air. She caught the edge of one page. The seam brightened, waiting. She could hold the journal or step through. Not both. Elowyn let the journal go. It vanished into the humming dark. The seam flared open, and she and Tavian crossed toward sunlight at last. But the divine symbols her grandmother left were gone now, and she carried only what she remembered of them.

The seam spat Elowyn and Tavian back into sunlight, and the warmth felt like a first breath after a long dive. But relief did not last. Elowyn opened her herbarium on the grass and turned the pages. Each pressed bloom sat in place, but the spaces beside them were empty. She had the flowers. She did not have what they were for. Her grandmother's journal was gone now, and with it the symbols that named each forgotten use. "I have the collection," she said. "But it's just a book of dead petals unless I know what they did." Tavian sat beside her and checked his compass out of habit. The needle held still. "So we find someone who remembers," he said. "You know one who reads that kind of lore." Elowyn did know. Morrowyn had translated the journal once, before it was lost. Morrowyn was the small godling of Small Beginnings, the one who woke the seed Elowyn had sacrificed her rare bloom to save. That gift had left Morrowyn owing her a debt. But godlings did not answer twice for free, and Elowyn had nothing left to trade. They found Morrowyn crouched over a cracked pot, coaxing a green shoot upright with one finger. Her leaf-hair curled around a coral flower, and her amber eyes flicked up, then down to the shoot again. "You came back," she said. "Small. Good. The seed you woke is walking now." She wiggled her fingers like little legs. "I need help," Elowyn said. She held out the herbarium. "The blooms are here. But their uses are gone. I lost the journal." Morrowyn tilted her head. "Once," she said. "I read it once. A reading is a giving. Givings cost." She turned back to her shoot. Elowyn's chest tightened. This was the wall she'd feared. She had no charm, no necklace, no journal. Then she looked at the shoot, thin and leaning. "Your seed woke because of my bloom," she said quietly. "You called it a debt. I'm calling it in." Morrowyn went still. Her ears drooped, then lifted. For a godling, a debt was not a feeling. It was a fact, heavy as a stone. "A fair pull," she said. "Yes. One reading, paid." She patted the soil, then stood on her tiny vine-wrapped feet. "Open it. Slow. I don't remember fast." Elowyn spread the herbarium across her knees. Morrowyn touched each pressed flower and named its old work. This one calmed fever. This one dyed cloth the color of dusk. This one, the pale bloom, ended sleep. Elowyn wrote each use in her own hand, filling the empty spaces at last. When Morrowyn touched the final page, she paused. "One is missing," she said. "Silphium. The eaten one. It has no bloom here. You can't name a use you don't hold." The debt was paid. The herbarium was nearly whole. But one page stayed blank, waiting for a flower that no one alive had ever pressed.

Elowyn stared at the blank page where silphium belonged. Morrowyn had named every other flower's use, but this one stayed empty. No one alive had pressed the plant. No one alive could name its work. She closed the herbarium and pressed her hand flat on the cover. "There has to be one left somewhere," she said. "Everyone says it's gone. But everyone said Thessara was gone too." Morrowyn crouched by her cracked pot again, poking the green shoot upright. She didn't look up. "Silphium sleeps," she said. "The eaten one slept longest. Ate itself out of the world." She wiggled a finger at the soil. "But sleep is not death. I know the difference. It is my whole job." Elowyn knelt beside her. "You mean a seed still exists?" "A seed called once," Morrowyn said. "Faint. From the seam place. Where the light splits." She tilted her head toward Tavian, who leaned in the doorway with his compass still in his hand. "You went there. Sunlight on one side. Moonlight on the other. Something grows in the split." Tavian frowned. "We nearly didn't come back from that split." "You don't have to cross," Morrowyn said. She stood on her vine-wrapped feet and dug in the soil of her cracked pot. Her small fingers closed around something pale. She held it up. A single seed, translucent, glowing faintly like a drop of milk in moonlight. "I held this one. It called with the others. I couldn't wake it. Too big for me. Too old." Elowyn's breath caught. "That's silphium?" "The eaten one," Morrowyn said. She placed the seed in Elowyn's palm. It was warm. "A giving. For the debt you paid me kindly. Not owed. Given." She looked at the leaning shoot in her pot, then back at Elowyn. "You wake things. Your blooms wake things. Maybe you wake this. Maybe not." Elowyn curled her fingers around the seed. "If it grows, I can press its flower. I can name what it did." "Fed whole cities," Morrowyn said simply. "Before it slept. That was its work." There it was. The use, spoken aloud at last. Elowyn opened the herbarium and wrote in the empty space: silphium, food for many, driven to sleep by hunger. The page was no longer blank. But the pressed flower still wasn't there. She had the name of the work. She did not have the bloom. Elowyn looked at the seed glowing in her hand. "I have to grow it myself," she said. "That's the only bloom left to find." Morrowyn nodded and returned to her shoot. "Grow it where the boundary thins," she said. "Silphium won't wake anywhere else. It needs the split light." Tavian pushed off the doorframe. "So we're going back toward the seam," he said. "On purpose this time." Elowyn closed her hand around the warm seed. The catalog had a name now. It still needed a flower, and the flower waited where the two lights met.

Elowyn and Tavian followed the root-marked path back toward the seam. The seed glowed in her cupped hand. Ahead, the ground split into two lights—warm sun on one side, cool moon on the other. A house of curling towers and giant flower shapes rose where they met. She had almost reached the crossing when a voice spoke behind her. "A seed," Tairo said. "The eaten one. I felt it wake the air two days ago." He leaned against a coral arch, his sash heavy with bells and charms. Tairo collected lost things, and he had taken from Elowyn before—her crescent charm, her shell necklace. Each time she walked away lighter. His crooked smile said this would cost her again. "I'm not trading the seed," Elowyn said. "It has to grow here. There's no other place." "I don't want the seed." Tairo tilted his head. "Seeds are dull. But the crossing is mine to open. Silphium walks through, or it doesn't." He held up one finger. "One charm from your bag. My choice." Tavian stepped close to her. "He's stalling for the best piece," he murmured. "Pick first. Don't let him." Elowyn opened her satchel. Her fingers found the small glass box near the bottom. Inside it sat the charm from her old stolen map page—the flower and the faded lines that had first pointed her toward Thessara. She had kept it through every trade. It meant the most. That was why he would want it. She lifted the box out. "This one," she said. "Before you ask." Tairo's smile faltered, just slightly. She had chosen the thing he was reaching for. He took the box and turned it in the moonlight. The flower inside caught the split light and glowed. "Well," he said. "You've done my choosing for me. Ridiculous. I liked it better when you resisted." He tucked the box into his sash, and the crossing between the lights fell open like a curtain drawn aside. Elowyn walked to the exact line where sun met moon. She knelt. The soil there was half-warm, half-cool. She pressed the seed into it with her thumb and covered it over. The glow sank beneath the dirt and stayed. "Now what?" Tavian asked. "Now it wakes, or it doesn't." Elowyn sat back on her heels. Her hand ached where the seed had rested. The last silphium was in the ground at last, planted in the only soil that might rouse it. Tairo was already gone. But as she watched, a thin pale shoot pushed up through the split soil—faster than any plant should grow. It leaned toward the moonlit side, then straightened. It was not a flower yet. It would need tending, and time, and something more she did not yet have. Elowyn opened her herbarium to the silphium page. The name was written. The space for the flower waited, still empty.