Mariah had three days before the university reclaimed the archive room, and the only clue to the lost library sat under her hands in a language nobody alive could read. The page was a photograph of a photograph, taken sixty years ago from a manuscript that had since burned. Six lines of script curled across the top. Mariah had cross-checked them against every alphabet in the reference stacks. Nothing matched. The rhinestones on her sleeves clicked against the table each time she turned a page. She had chased rumors of this library since she was twelve — a place said to hold every answer humankind had ever asked for. She had found the reference. She could not read the reference. She photographed the script, packed her notebook, and took the late bus to the edge of the city, to a cottage she had written to twice without answer. The retired linguistics professor opened the door in a pink scarf and reading glasses pushed up into silver hair. She looked at Mariah's sparkling cuffs, then at the folder under her arm. "You're the girl who keeps sending letters," she said. "Come in before the moths do." Inside, a green moth the size of a dinner plate rested on the window screen, its wings marked like kudzu leaves. Mariah tried not to stare. She spread the photograph on the kitchen table. The professor bent close. Her smile flattened. "I can't read this." "You taught dead languages for forty years." "And this isn't one of them." She tapped a cluster of marks. "But I've seen these three glyphs before. On a rubbing a student brought me from a temple ruin in the south. Cracked stone, broken carvings, half swallowed by vine." She looked up. "The rubbing had more script around them. If the temple still stands, the full inscription is still there." "Translate the rubbing for me." "I can't translate three glyphs out of a hundred. I need the whole text. And I'm not traveling." She slid a small photograph from a drawer and set it beside Mariah's. "But you can. Take this. Match it to the wall. Copy everything around it. Bring it back and I'll try." Mariah studied the rubbing. Dense inscriptions in four bands of color, split by a jagged crack. A stone fragment, photographed against grid paper. "How far south?" "Two days by train. Then you walk. The forest there grows fast." The professor's eyes moved to the moth on the screen. "Wear long sleeves. The vines have thorns." Mariah folded both photographs into her notebook. Her translator wasn't coming. Her answer was a wall in a ruin she had never seen, guarded by a forest that ate roads. She caught the first train south at dawn.

The train let Mariah out at a platform half-eaten by vine. She walked the last miles into a town where the pavement broke under green shoots. She had the professor's rubbing in her notebook and no way to make one of her own. Paper alone would tear on weathered stone. A pencil would skip the shallow cuts and lose half the script. A bad copy would give the professor nothing to translate, and the archive room clock kept ticking in the city behind her. She asked at the market for anyone who worked with paper and ink. A woman selling peppers pointed her down a lane of white brick. The shop leaned under climbing roses. A hand-painted sign read OLD PRINT SHOP. Inside, stacks of newsprint rose past Mariah's shoulder. A cast-iron press stood in the center of the room, its oak frame carved with gears and topped by a small clock face. Ink smelled like wet iron. A short old man stood at the press, feeding a sheet between the rollers. White hair stuck up in every direction. Round glasses slid down a red nose. His hands were black to the wrists. This was the grave rubbings collector the pepper seller had named — the one man in the region who copied stone for a living. "I need to copy an inscription," Mariah said. "On a temple wall. Weathered." Rouge Ashworth did not look up. "Everyone needs to copy something. Hold this." She caught the damp sheet he pushed at her. He wiped his hands on his coat and finally studied her — the rhinestones on her cuffs, the folder, the mud on her boots. "South temple?" he said. "Yes." "Then pencil won't do. Stone's soft where the vine ate it. Press too hard, you lose the cut." He shuffled to a shelf and pulled down a thick book. He set it on the counter. The cover was cream leather, ringed with painted symbols in red, green, and blue. "Illustrated Symbol Codex. If your script matches anything human, it's in here. Take it." "I can pay for the loan." "Bring it back." He turned to a drawer and counted out sheets of black waxed paper, a roll of soft cotton, and a stub of graphite wrapped in cloth. "Lay the paper. Rub with the cloth first, then the graphite. Two passes. Don't rush the corners." Mariah wrote it down word for word. "One more thing." He reached under the counter and set a pair of pink-lensed glasses in gold frames on top of the codex. "Old stock. They read what the eye can't. Try them on the stone before you copy. If a mark's too faint to see, they'll catch it." She paid what he asked. She left with the tools bundled under her arm and the codex heavy against her ribs. The temple was still a day's walk south. But now, when she found the wall, she could take it home clean.

Mariah left the town at dawn with the codex strapped to her pack and the rubbing tools rolled tight under the flap. The trail south ran clean for an hour. Then it stopped. A wall of green stood across the path, taller than she was, thick as a barn. Vines twisted through vines. Thorns the length of her thumb pointed every direction. She pushed a leaf aside with her sleeve. A thorn caught her cuff and drew a bead of blood from her wrist. She walked the edge for a mile east and a mile west. The wall did not thin. Going around meant three days lost, maybe four. The archive clock did not have three days in it. She went back to the town and asked the pepper seller who cleared vines. The woman looked at her for a long moment and named a name. Mariah found her in the back room of a shuttered bar, cleaning a curved blade on her knee. Rosa Lee did not stand. Her chest plate had a deep dent over the heart. Six knives hung off her belt in a row. Her red mouth barely moved when she spoke. "How much wall?" "A hundred yards. Maybe more. Thorned." "Pay?" Mariah opened her purse and set the coins on the crate between them. Rosa Lee counted them with one finger. "Not enough for my crew," Rosa Lee said. "Enough for me and the dog." "The dog?" Rosa Lee whistled once. Something moved under the bar. It came out low and long, ribs showing through patchy fur, jaw wet. Green stained its teeth. It was not a dog. It watched Mariah with one pale eye and chewed a length of vine like jerky. "It eats the thorn kind," Rosa Lee said. "I cut what it won't." They walked back to the wall by noon. The beast went in first. It tore leaves in wet mouthfuls and swallowed thorns without flinching. Rosa Lee followed with a curved blade in each hand. She cut low, fast, close to the root. Mariah came behind them and dragged the fallen coils off the path. It took four hours. By the end, Mariah's arms were striped red. The beast's jaws ran with green sap. A tunnel stood open through the wall, wide enough for one person at a time. Rosa Lee wiped her blades on a leaf. "Trail's yours," she said. "I go back at dark." "Thank you." "Something's watching from the far side." Rosa Lee did not point. "Since we started cutting. Keep moving once you're through." Mariah looked into the tunnel. On the far end, the trail bent into shadow. A branch shifted where no wind moved it. She tightened the pack straps. She stepped into the gap and started walking.

The tunnel spat Mariah out into the ruins. Broken columns leaned in the afternoon light. Moss covered the paving stones. She stepped clear of the thorn wall and the trail bent left between two fallen arches. Behind her, something dropped from a branch and did not land loud. She turned. A shape moved between the columns. Low. Long. Its coat drank the light and gave nothing back. Two eyes lit up, one gold, one blue. It did not run at her. It paced her. Every time she stepped forward, it stepped forward. When she stopped, it stopped. Mariah walked faster. The stalker walked faster. She could see the temple stones now, weathered and marked with the script she had come a hundred miles to copy. She could not stop to unroll the waxed paper. She could not even slow down. The thing was closing the gap one careful step at a time. She scanned the ruins for cover. Roof gone. Roof gone. Walls too low. Then, past a leaning stele, she saw a small stone building set into the slope. Peaked roof. Heavy wooden door bound in iron. Carved symbols crowded every block. The door stood open a finger's width. She ran. The stalker broke into a run behind her. She heard its claws on stone for the first time. She hit the door with her shoulder, tumbled inside, and shoved it closed. The iron bolt was already halfway drawn. A hand caught hers on the bolt and slammed it home. A man stood in the dark beside her. Big shoulders. Tool belt. He held a crystal lantern low against his hip. The light threw sharp gold across the stone steps behind him. "Back from the door," he said. "It'll test the hinges." Mariah stepped back. Something heavy hit the wood from outside. The bolt held. The man did not flinch. "Marcus Gravehart," he said. "I scout tombs. This one's mine this week." "Mariah. I need a rubbing off the temple stones." "Not today you don't." Another strike on the door. Then quiet. Marcus lifted the lantern. The cellar dropped away in worn steps. Old carvings ran along the walls, the same script Mariah carried folded in her pack. "It won't leave," he said. "They wait. Sometimes days." Mariah's hand went to the pack strap. The archive clock ticked in her head. The stones she needed sat forty yards away, on the far side of a door she could not open. "Is there another way out?" Marcus looked down the steps. The lantern light caught on facets and threw jewel-shaped spots across the walls. "There's a way," he said. "Goes under. Comes up somewhere I haven't found yet." She was alive. She was also trapped, and her stone waited in the open where the thing outside could see it.

Marcus counted the water skins by lantern light and set them on the step. Two skins, both light. A half sack of dried meal. Three withered apples. Mariah watched him work and did her own math. Two days. Maybe three if she drank less than she needed. The stones outside would still be there. She would not be strong enough to hold a graphite stick. "We have to try the passage," she said. "It's not cleared," Marcus said. "I've been down twice. It bends and drops. I don't know where it ends." "Then I go up top and look for water while you clear more of it." "The thing outside will kill you." "Not if it doesn't see me leave." She pointed at the back wall. A narrow shaft ran up through the stone, meant for smoke or air. She could fit. Marcus did not like it. He boosted her anyway. She came out on the slope behind the building. The stalker's shadow crossed the front path once, then again. It did not turn. She kept low and moved uphill through the ruins. She smelled the water before she saw it. A carved stone shelter sat between two toppled walls. Moss covered its peaked roof. A shallow basin held clear water fed by a spring under the floor. She filled both skins she had brought and drank until her stomach hurt. On the way back, vines choked a fallen column. Red berries hung in clusters, glossy and heavy. She knew this plant from the codex Rouge had drawn her. Safe. Sweet. She stripped two handfuls into her scarf and knotted it. A cough on the path stopped her. An old man in a yellow robe sat on a broken step with a walking staff across his knees. Bald head. Long white beard. A string of red beads. He did not look surprised to see her. "You are the one hiding in the priest's house," he said. "You know it?" "I have slept in it. There is a stone in the cellar floor with a cross cut into it. Lift it. The priest kept his stores below. Grain jars. Oil. Perhaps still good." She stared at him. He smiled and tapped his staff. "The creature does not follow me. I smell wrong to it. Go quickly." He stood and walked off between the columns before she could thank him. Mariah crawled back down the shaft with the skins and berries. She told Marcus about the stone. He found the cross under a layer of dust. Together they levered it up. Below sat a small vault, dry, lined with sealed jars. Grain. Oil. A crock of honey. She sat on the step and ate. Her hands stopped shaking. The stalker paced outside the door, but she had days now. Days to find another way out to the stones.