Page 8 of Wings of Reverie

Less Sleep

Worse pain than before. Do not attempt again.

Increased Melted Ice Consumption

Helped? Or imagined improvement?

Head Massage

Helped temporarily. Patient fell asleep.

Peppermint Oil

No change, excepting patient’s briefly smelling like candy.

3

Periwinkle woke up looking at the night sky.

Her thoughts were slushy, sluggish. She knew she’d fallen asleep in her bed, tucked beneath her favorite feather blanket, the dregs of an iced chamomile tea on her nightstand.

When Periwinkle had finally shut her eyes, she’d expected to be in her own room the next time she opened them, seeing the sunrise the day of their trip to the Mainland. But though she glimpsed what might’ve been the dawn in her periphery, the moon was still high, and the stars shimmered brightly overhead.

Still, an unpleasant heat lingered somewhere around her stomach. Why?

And then Periwinkle remembered. She’d had a nightmare.

Somehow, it had brought her here—barefoot, deep in the woods, not far from the Pixie Dust Well. And when she looked to the sky again, she saw that what she’d taken for the sunrise was something else entirely.

Strangely colored lights hovered in little wisps just over her head, some of them luminous green and rose and blue, others a slick, oily black-purple hardly visible against the night sky. They floated around her temples and the crown of her head like a halo, as if they’d been sprinkled with pixie dust. Periwinkle sat up and nudged at one small, rose-colored wisp of cloud with her index finger, but it disappeared into her skin the moment she touched it.

“What are you?” she whispered to the night.

Periwinkle didn’t expect the night to answer. But it did.

“They’re your dreams,” said a voice behind her. Periwinkle turned, startled to find that she wasn’t alone, and fluttered up from her place on the ground.

The owner of the voice was a sparrow man. Another winter fairy, of course, but she couldn’t quite place him. He was much taller than she was but just as pale, with thick, tousled black hair that curled around his ears and forehead and just above the high collar of his raven-feather waistcoat. Despite his relaxed posture—he was almost slouching, really—his cheeks were flushed, like he’d flown over to wherever they were in a hurry.

His most striking trait, though, was his eyes. They were almost black, the dark of a night that promised something—a party, astory, a dream. But despite that promise, the look in them made Periwinkle feel like she was reckoning with a nocturnal animal in the dark. Like he could look at her and see everything, and she could see nothing at all.

“How did you know I was dreaming?” she asked. His brow furrowed.

“Because,” he said, like it was simple. Obvious. “I dream, too.”