Page 74 of Wings of Reverie

Weaver could feel Periwinkle’s trepidation, there inside her dream. But he could also feel Periwinkle’s love for her friends, for winter, for the Pixie Dust Tree.

To her, dreaming was a gift, not a curse. He’d never seen things that way until he’d met her.

Periwinkle had changed everything—almost.

When they were done binding up the root, Weaver took her hand,and together they watched the Pixie Dust Tree grow strong again, knitting itself back together beneath a shimmer of violet. And the look on Periwinkle’s face—it took Weaver’s breath away.

She was always doing that. Knocking him off course with just the tiniest thing. The reverence in her face every time she looked at the dreams, her proximity at Floss’s, her curiosity and complete disregard for his personal space. Her voice when she’d defended him, though he’d barely deserved it.

He would never forget the feel of her shoulders under his hands and her lips under his own.

He’d been completely beneath her notice for so long. It would’ve been better if he’d stayed that way.

But Weaver still couldn’t help watching her as she fluttered delicately into the air, to the Pixie Dust Tree that was so much closer in this dream than it was in reality. When he saw the tree, though, he frowned.

He recognized all the pieces of this dream. The rot, the storm, the root, the tree.

Everything but the golden web wrapped around the Pixie Dust Tree’s trunk, sparkling in the clear light of day.

Periwinkle’s dreams were darker than his had ever been. But this web—it was brighter than anything his dreams had ever shown him.

He thought then of the dream that always came back to him, the one where he chased the moon. Where even as he flew and fought and stretched, he knew it was for something he would never capture, could never save.

This dream was no different, really.

Weaver could never catch the moon. And watching Periwinkle delicately touch the golden web wrapped around the tree trunk, he knew—heknew—she could never be his.

He was chasing a storybook ending. And he was no storybook hero.

20

“Periwinkle. Periwinkle, wake up.”

Periwinkle opened her eyes. Her vision and her memory took a moment to adjust. But she sat up with a gasp as she remembered her dream.

“Weaver!” she said. “I just realized. Weaver—they’re all going to be trapped.”

Weaver cupped her cheek, swallowing. “It was just a dream,” he said. “Whatever it was.”

“It won’t be just a dream if we can’t save the root, though,” she said urgently. “If we can’t save the Pixie Dust Tree, spring willnever come to the Mainland. My friends will never come home. I’ll never see any of them again.”

Life without pixie dust, without flying—she could picture it, if she was brave. The thought of it ached, but she could imagine life moving forward somehow. She didn’t know how they’d care for the Mainland. But they would do it.

They would still be themselves, and Pixie Hollow would still be itself, and somehow, everything would be okay.

But life without Spike? Gliss? Sled, Slush, the others?

She couldn’t even fathom such a thing. She couldn’t even imagine the Winter Woods half empty, the Mainland permanently trapped in what was only ever supposed to be one beat of its yearly rhythm.

It would be lost in reverie forever, never moving forward. The frost and snow that laid it down for a season’s rest would become its prison. It would be like being trapped in a dream, and never waking up.

Weaver sat beside her, his chest rising and falling heavily. A lock of hair fell into his eyes. “Tell me the rest of the dream.”

“I dreamed you came,” she said. “The web appeared again, and protected the tree. And you spun my dreams, and we saved it.”

“Well, there you go,” he said. But his voice was strained.

“I just don’t understand,” Periwinkle whispered. “Why are my dreams sometimes so wonderful and sometimes so terrible?” There had been the touch of Weaver’s hand, and then there had been herfriends falling from the sky. The tree dying in front of her eyes, and the web that had wrapped it up just like it had saved her friends.