Clue one of The Philosopher's Stone.

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago - I'm doing a MKAL (Mystery Knit A Long) of Fiddle Knits' The Philosopher's Stone. It uses gradient yarn and beads.  It combines cables and lace (really, really addicted to cable projects) and I have never used as many different cable crossovers as in the 40 rows of clue one.  The yarn I'm using is Alpaca Cloud fingering, which is a little fuzzy for this much cabling (I really didn't predict this much cabling from teh swatch pattern provided)  but it is super soft, and I think the cable definition will improve with light blocking and the lighter colours as I swap out skeins for the gradient effect.  So that I don't "spoil" the mystery -- I'm posting the picture below the page break - so click if you want to see clue 1.