“Well?” the yellow filly asks expectantly.
“Anna was carried out by her parents… because she was a baby,” you say. “The doctors kept her that long just to make sure she was developing normally. So what I’m looking for is five baby animals.”
The yellow filly giggled and nodded gleefully.
“All right, now to find and feed them,” you say. “I know one already; there’s some metal flamingos over there that are the only statues made of metal.”
You take the three marbles that go with metal: a compass pointing west for the sunset, a picture of a nose for perfume, and white for gardenias, and carry them over to the flamingos. Sure enough a flamingo chick is staring up at its mother, beak open; you slide the three marbles into the slot and hear them rattle as they travel inside.
If you get these wrong you’re sunk; you can’t afford to wait for the puzzle to reset tomorrow. At least it seems easy enough.
The only wooden animals in the sculpture garden are some rustic bears, so you feed the bear cub the east marble for sunrise, eyes for watching, and green for the growing things.
Next you find a mother dragon cuddling some stone eggs, one of which has a baby dragon poking its head out. Dragons mean fire, so he gets a red marble and a tongue marble for the spicy hot peppers and a south marble for summer in December.
By a duck pond you find some stone seals and feed their baby an ear and a black marble for the din in the dark night and a north marble for the most famous aurora.
That leaves just one baby, an elephant. Into its mouth you put a hoof for the feel and a gold marble for the golden earth. The last marble is a compass rose with no arrow filled in, just the dot in the center.
You’ve been acquiring more and more foals following you around as you deposit all the marbles, and when the last one slides into place, all of them turn towards the fountain. You follow their lead.
The telescope-wielding pony in the center of the fountain glows and starts to spin. The children cheer and say “You did it! You solved the riddle! You rule!” and other things. You smile modestly and walk over to examine the statue.
Fabric Study joins you. “Great bunch of kids,” you tell her.
She nods. “But my brother and I solved this together when he was five and I was three. What are we supposed to do now?”
“I think I can guess…” You carefully climb on the back of the stone statue.
“That’s dangerous!” the pink filly shouts.
“It’s okay; I’m an adult,” you tell them, maneuvering your head around the statue’s stone one to look through the stone telescope. Sure enough there’s a real lens inside it; through it you can make out a house with a distinct green-roofed tower. You turn to Fabric Study. “Hey, you know where that house is from here?”
“There’s a house in there?” some of the children whisper to each other excitedly.
“Let me see,” Fabric Study says.
You step off the statue into the fountain and she climbs up, using telekinesis to keep her fancy dress away from the water. She puts her eyes to the telescope, gasps, and then pulls back, blushing slightly.
“So you do know it?” you say.
“What is it, Miss Study?” a green colt asks.
“Is it your special somepony?” the pink filly asks in a sing-song voice.
“St-stop it Lovebug!” Fabric Study tells the amorous filly. To you, softly, she says, “Yes. I can take you there. Let’s run.”
“Okay.” To the children you say, “Thanks for all the help, kids, but we have to go now.”
“Will you come back to the playground before you leave?” the yellow filly asks you with perfect puppy eyes.
“...No promises,” you say. You hate to say no to that face, but as much as you’d like to forget your mortal enemies are looking for you, you can’t afford to do so.
Fabric Study gallops off down the hillside, forcing you to dash to keep up. At this speed, the house turns out to be only a few minutes away from the hill.
It’s a quaint place with two stories and a roof balcony in addition to the round, green tower on the side. The winding path to the house is paved with a wide variety of stones and is bordered with multicolored pansies and impatiens. The windows all have either wrought iron bars in fanciful patterns or stained glass. The front porch is painted light olive green and a two-pony porch swing the same color hangs by the door, covered liberally with multishaped throw pillows in mauve and yellow.
Fabric Study trots up the steps and raps on the door. You stumble up behind her and struggle a moment to catch your breath from that dash.
“Whose house is this?” you ask, panting.
“...The Faithfuls’...” Fabric says.
That can’t be a coincidence. “So why did you blush so much?”
A panel in the top of the door slides open and a blue earth pony stallion Fabric’s age sticks his head out. When he sees Fabric, he smiles in a way that immediately answers your question.
“Fabby!” he says, pushing open the door to let her in. “I didn’t see the signal… urk.” He finally notices you.
“Th-this isn’t what you think, Low,” Fabric says. “They’re with me and we’re here because… because they’re a private detective…”
“My dad hired a detective to keep us apart?” ‘Low’ says, indignant.
“I’m here to find her brother and this has nothing to do with you,” you say. Ugh, relationship drama; like you don’t get enough of that on your normal assignments. “Fabric, does he know…?”
“Yes,” she says, nodding. “We were… trying to follow the path of puzzles to catch up with my brother, and…”
“And it led you here.” Low sighed. “...I… I know what you’re thinking, and it’s not like that…”
“A Faithful is discreet,” Fabric sighed.
“More or less. Come inside.” Low steps back a bit to allow both of you entry.
The Faithful’s living room is an eclectic mix of old fashioned tables and picture frames and modern couches and rocking chairs. A floor-to-ceiling bookcase is against one corner, but it’s mostly filled with photos, ancient and modern, arranged chronologically to create the effect of color slowly fading into the world. A single shelf is devoted to gardening books and another shelf has a few books shoved to one side of it and held up with a pegasus-shaped bookend. The titles are cleaning and repair guides, a book for managing servants, a book on proper etiquette, and an ancient book about rock collecting for some reason.
“So if you’re on the path, did you see my brother?” Fabric asks.
“Kind of. Mom was the one who actually showed him the puzzle, since I was out doing shopping until a little while ago. As I was coming back I saw him leave; he was with a stranger and they were arguing about something.”
“What did the stranger look like?” you ask.
“What were they arguing about?” Fabric says.
Low rubs the back of his head nervously. “I mean… we were pretty far away, or else I’d’ve tried to catch up and say hi. The huge dark blue unicorn he was with seemed super mad about something and Swordplay had his head low and his tail between his legs. They also were in a huge hurry.”
“Do you know where they went to then?” Fabric asked.
“None of us know the destination,” Low said. “I’ll show you the puzzle and explain…”
He leads you over to some basement stairs and descends into darkness.
“So I don’t know if you figured this out by yourself, Fabby, but the puzzles after this point are spread far and wide,” Low explains. “Some of them need maintenance while this one just needs guarding, so apparently another family got roped into the Study tradition and the Faithful tradition is to make sure the puzzles work while simultaneously not knowing what they are or telling anyone.” A lightbulb comes on with a click, revealing normal basement clutter and laundry implements.
You and Fabric follow him down the stairs. “Hence why Faithfuls are discreet?” you ask.
“Family motto,” Low says, walking to a far corner of the basement and starting to take away a pile of boxes. “And so I couldn’t tell you anything, Fabby. When your brother accidentally found the chest several years ago my dad was literally on the verge of sending me to an orphanage until Swordplay persuaded him it wasn’t my fault…”
“How horrible!” Fabric Study cries.
“How overdramatic,” you say.
“My dad only knows bossing around and being bossed around; any other relationship is a mystery to him,” Low says.
“At least you have Faithful Tender…” Fabric says.
“Yeah, mom’s a sweetheart,” Low agrees. He takes away the last box to reveal a stone chest on the floor. “It’s built into the floor and walls of the house which is why you can’t solve this in the comfort of our living room.”
A large golden key is sticking out of the chest’s lock but the chest itself is shut. Above the key are five buttons, each made of a different colored gemstone. On the lid of the chest is a bronze plaque with some text. You read aloud, “To open the chest, push the buttons in the correct order. The stones with Z in their names are in alphabetical order. No stones starting with the same letter are next to each other. The first stone you press does not start with A.”
You stare blankly at the semiprecious stones. None of the buttons are labeled with the type of stone they are. “Um….”
“Oh, right, the geologist who built the puzzle made it needlessly confusing,” Low said. “I’ll be right back with the gem book…”
As he runs off, you turn to Fabric Study. “Nice guy. What’s Low short for?”
“Faithful Fellow,” Fabric says. “Listen… please don’t tell my parents about this. I’ll pay whatever it takes…”
“Why? It sounded like Faithful Aide was most against it and he already knows doesn’t he?” you say.
Fabric Study wrings her hooves. “Low and I grew up together and we can’t bear the thought of being apart, and as soon as Faithful Aide found out he stopped letting his son work and play at the mansion anymore. Fed my parents some line about his talent not being useful to them even though we definitely could find use for a baker.” She inhales and swallows, looking like she’s fighting tears. “He spent hours, days, scolding poor Low for doing something that would disgrace our families so.”
“Both families?” you say. “Since when do servants worry about their reputation?”
“I guess… I guess because of what he just said, about how Faithfuls have their tradition and the Studies have our own. Low’s the only son they have and I guess it would make the tradition stop working if we were both the same family…”
“The Studys should be fine though. They have Swordplay,” you say. “Wait… what happens if there’s more than one Study child? Does only the oldest inherit the line of puzzles?”
“Well… it only happened once,” Fabric Study said.
“Literature and Sculpture?” you say.
“Right, but Sculpture never had any children.”
“Really.” You think about the lovingly designed statue park. “Seems sad.”
“Yeah…”
“But what about your parents? They’re not near-abusive like Faithful Aide is are they?”
The word makes Fabric jerk to attention. “No! Oh, no, Aide is strict but abusive is too…” She trails off, then says very fast, “and my parents love me and my brother and would never…!”
“Fine, fine, I get it,” you say. “But if they really love you, wouldn’t they want you to follow your heart?”
Fabric rubs one foreleg against another. “They never respect my dreams much if they stand in the way of tradition…”
“I see,” you say. “So that’s what Swordplay meant….”
“What?” Fabric asks.
“Found it,” Faithful Fellow says, coming downstairs balancing the book on his head. “Time to find your brother, eh?”
“Right,” you say, taking the book from him.
After flipping through the book and debating about minor differences in color with Fabric and Fellow you collectively figure out the identity of all the gemstones; it helps once you realize Geological Study (or perhaps a frustrated descendant) put small pencil marks next to the stones involved in the puzzle.
“So the iridescent amber-green stone is Ammolite,” you say, tracing the gem.
“The purple Tanzanite is my favorite,” Faithful Fellow says. “It reminds me of you, Fabby.”
Fabric Study blushes. “Clear Zircon reminds me of diamonds, which are a girl’s best friend, but I like the Azurite. It’s like lapis lazuli but teal; what’s not to love?”
“And the brown one is…” you flip through the book looking for pencil marks. “Enstatite. Time to solve this.”