Page 26 of Wings of Reverie

Periwinkle rolled her eyes. “I have a rare condition called being nice to people. You’ll have to investigate,” she said. “Anyway, I actually don’t think anyone’s asking questions today.” The whole time they’d been searching, she’d been trying not to act secretive about their books. But at some point, she’d realized that secrecy was the rule in the Hall of Winter just then, not the exception.

“Peri!” Periwinkle glanced around. Flare, the light-talent fairy she’d seen at the Juniper Glade prep party, waved at her from behind a stack of books she’d turned around to hide their titles. “I heard you stayed behind. I can’t believe it. Are you all right?”

Periwinkle shoved her maps behind her back. “Oh, I’m fine!” shesaid breezily. “What are you up to? What iseveryonehere up to?”

Flare looked confused. “Picking gifts for the Book Flood. Aren’t you—oh, wait.” She stopped herself, waving a hand. “I forgot. You’re never here for the Frost Festival.”

“This is a Frost Festival thing?” Periwinkle asked. She tried very hard not to glare at Weaver, who would probably have known this if he’d ever willingly participated in a group activity before.

“Yes! The day after the night market is always the Book Flood,” Flare said cheerfully. “Everyone gets books for their friends, and then we all read together that night. That’s why I’m—well.” She held up a notebook covered in lists of names and book titles, some of them scratched out. “Some people are just hard to find gifts for!”

Periwinkle nodded seriously. “So true. But that sounds magical!” She grinned, nudging Weaver. “Doesn’t that sound magical?”

He barely looked up from his books. “Flitterific.”

“Anyway, if you aren’t here for the Book Flood, what are yo—oh.” Flare broke off at Weaver’s scowl, tucking a pale braid behind her ear.

“We’re looking at maps,” Periwinkle said quickly. “Of the Mainland! Just for fun.”

“Do you remember the part where we agreed we didn’t want a lot of questions?” Weaver muttered.

“She’s being polite. You ought to try it,” Periwinkle whispered fiercely.

“You should—” Weaver started. But then Periwinkle noticed an empty pine cone chair.

“See you later!” she said to Flare, trying not to collapse in relief. The light-talent waved a confused goodbye as Periwinkle steered Weaver away, hustling him over the ice-tiled floor and toward the cozy reading area.

“Well, I guess that could’ve gone worse,” Weaver said.

“Sure. If you’d, like, bitten her or something, that would’ve been worse.” Periwinkle landed on the woven pine needle rug and set her books gingerly on the giant chair, already exhausted. Poor Flare. “You have got to learn how to talk to people like you’ve done it at least once before.”

Weaver scoffed. “Well, since fluttering around making everyone else happy seems to be your secret second talent, maybe you can teach me. You know, after we’re done saving Pixie Hollow.”

“That would be fine,” Periwinkle said, “except that after we’re done saving Pixie Hollow I was sort of hoping you’d never speak to me again.” She smiled at Weaver through her clenched teeth as she arranged her bag and books to one side of the chair before climbing up beside them. “What?” she finally demanded, when he didn’t do the same.

“Where am I supposed to sit?” he asked.

“Um, here?” Periwinkle widened her eyes in irritation and gestured at the space she’d left free for him. “Don’t worry, there’s enough room that you don’t actually have to come into contact with me.” When Weaver still didn’t move, she smiled at him sweetly. “Or you could always sit on the floor.”

Without a word, Weaver gritted his teeth and hopped up intothe chair with a thump, keeping as much distance between them as possible. Then they both got started with their books.

Periwinkle ignored Weaver for a while then, and Weaver ignored her right back. But she didn’t mind. That morning, Periwinkle read like she was eating an elaborate feast. With the maps and atlases piled in front of her like a snowdrift, she studied the history of the Winter Woods and Pixie Hollow one record at a time.

Landmarks of the Winter Woods. The Making of Snowlight Square. A Talent for All Seasons: Studios and Workshops from Spring to Winter. The Magic-Making Places of Winter. From Chilly River to Mistletoe Terrace: A Complete Atlas of Winter.Periwinkle pored over and through them all. Across years and records, she watched glades become forests, mountains become hills, settlements move from one place to another, depots established and relocated. Mines were built and abandoned; workshops were opened and closed.

Avoiding even the slightest contact with Weaver, who was pressed to the far side of their chair, Periwinkle read voraciously. But though she squinted over every fraction of every map of her corner of Pixie Hollow, she didn’t see anything about workshops to do with dream magic or dream-talents.

“Nothing,” Weaver finally said, voice sullen as he shut the last atlas. “Hours, and we haven’t found anything. And this was supposed to be a shortcut. There’s got to be a better way to do this.”

“Research takes time,” Periwinkle said with a shrug, trying to pretend she didn’t feel just as frustrated. Wiggling carefully awayfrom Weaver, she jumped down to the floor, stretching her wings. “Let’s get some fresh air.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “We need to think about this differently.” Without waiting for him, she headed back to the atrium and up past the snowflake-shaped platform at its center, then flew up to the second-floor mezzanine.

In a large salon upstairs full of suncatcher chandeliers, Weaver finally caught up with her. “Where are you going?” he complained. Periwinkle flew on, not answering, through an empty sculpture gallery and a corridor echoing with the harmonies of music books.

When they reached a large ice-pane window beside a large, cozy chair, Periwinkle raised the window sash and steered Weaver toward it by his shoulders. “What are you doing?” he demanded.