Page 67 of Wings of Reverie

The workshopshone.

“Weaver,” she whispered. His breath hitched, but he didn’t speak.

They needed more light. Periwinkle hurried to a starcatcher on the wall and touched it, and incredibly, it glowed to life. The workshop sparkled more and more brightly the more starcatchers she lit, like a jewel being polished to a shine.

Though the walls of the tunnel had been thoroughly mined, the workshop walls had been left alone. Deep blue and pale blue and spearmint green stones sparkled in clusters in the gray rock walls, with dashes of gold surfacing here and there. Just like in Floss’s workshop, racks hung from the ceiling, weighed down with bobbins of spun silver, spun gold, spun sapphires and aquamarines and amethysts that trailed down like streamers. Periwinkle ran her fingers through the glittering metal and gemstone threads and over the jewels in the walls.

Tracing the workshop’s forgotten treasures, she thought of Weaver in the Bobbin Wood workshop, touching everything he saw, and bit her lip at the memory.

“Weaver, do you see the spindle?” she called, then paused at asound like dust falling in the corner. But Weaver didn’t answer. He stood at a table on the far side of the room, studying something Periwinkle couldn’t see.

Like the other workshop they’d found, this one was full of workbenches, these with legs of gold and tabletops of frost or maybe diamond. Periwinkle moved to the closest one and began to search, and Legs hopped down to do the same.

Periwinkle’s first thought was that whoever had used the cluttered table nearest to her had been a kindred spirit; the bench looked more like Periwinkle’s messy house than Weaver’s neat workbench at Floss’s. Beneath a layer of dirt and dust, she found dozens of shining tools—a pincushion stuffed with needles and pearl-topped pins, a jeweler’s glass, spider-silk pouches, chisels and tongs, and even a little axe with a golden handle. Legs climbed his way over all of it, liquid black eyes looking curiously on every artifact.

The next table was covered in projects, some finished, some mysterious in their half-done states. A length of blended dream-thread was tied around the stem of a baby’s golden rattle; a macramé hanger of the same thread was wrapped around an enormous sapphire starcatcher. A plain silver square shimmered the aquamarine and peridot and rose of good dreams, and when Periwinkle moved closer, she saw it was a hazy picture repeating itself over its smooth, tarnished surface. A nearby bench held a collection of harps of various sizes, most only half-finished, but the strings of the harps that were strung glowed with dream magic.

“This place is incredible,” she called to Weaver over her shoulder.

“I know,” he said. Still, Weaver sounded distracted.

One bench and then another, and then another and another. Periwinkle sifted through the piles of beautiful, abandoned pieces, frost and diamond boxes and golden hammers and wreaths of gems and a half-painted picture. How many fairies had worked in this workshop? Whose ideas had brought such extraordinary work into being?

And then, beside a speckled jewel box full of dream-colored rings, there it was.

The spindle.

A week before, Periwinkle wouldn’t have known what a spindle was, or what it looked like. But being at Floss’s had taught her.

The spindles Weaver used from day to day were pretty but plain, just simple wooden rods with a whorl at one end. But every tool in the mine workshop sparkled like pirate’s treasure, and the spindle was no exception. It was a single wand of pale blue sapphire, cut and polished to a shine, a little longer than Periwinkle’s hand. A gleaming golden whorl fitted with a small hook was set at one end.

If a spindle existed that could spin dreams out of her head and save the Pixie Dust Root, this had to be it.

“Look!” Periwinkle turned to Weaver and held it up, triumphant.

Weaver glanced up, then looked back to at his table. Then his head whipped toward Periwinkle again, eyes lighting up. “You found it?” he exclaimed.

She nodded, flittering toward him. “Back over there.” She held out the spindle and Weaver reached out with cautious hands, tracing its faceted sapphire surface and golden whorl.

“It’s amazing,” he said. But his voice sounded choked.

“What’s wrong?” Periwinkle frowned, pushing into his personal space like she always did. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing’s wrong. It’s a journal or something.” Weaver pulled her closer, turning a few pages and pointing. “Start here,” he said thickly.

Periwinkle wasn’t sure how she was supposed to concentrate, cradled between Weaver’s arms and the table. But he was so overwhelmed by whatever he’d read that he hardly seemed to notice how close they were.

The book, it turned out, was some kind of group diary kept up by dozens of dream-talents, but mainly by Stella, Morpheus, and Orion, the three she’d heard the most about. Starting where Weaver had told her to, Periwinkle read excitedly through pages of notes on how to give good dreams and keep away nightmares, and more—so much more. The book had entries on what things in Pixie Hollow could be made stronger and safer with dream magic, entries on how to train new dream-talents, on the dream-talents’ work with physical objects. There were plans and patterns for items like the harps, the starcatcher and dream-thread net she’d seen, nets to capture bad dreams, talismans to take to children on the Mainland who slept badly, and items for storing beautiful dreamsto watch again and again. Beneath the patterns and instructions were all sorts of adjustments they’d made as things had failed or worked well over time.

“Do you know what this means?” Weaver asked.

“It’s amazing!” she burst out. “You’re going to learn so much!”

“Yes. Of course. But—” Weaver paused. Periwinkle looked over her shoulder at the raw edge in his voice.

“But what?” she asked softly.

“There are so many names in here,” he said. “Dream-talents were like baking-talents or craft-talents or frost-talents. They weren’t strange, rare exceptions. They weren’t alone.” Weaver’s eyes were so bright, and the color in his cheeks was high, but his hands—his hands on the book were tremulous, so very careful.