Page 81 of Wings of Reverie

“They wouldn’t wake up,” she said. “Alder. Flare. The Keeper. All of them just started having nightmares, and thosethingswere everywhere—”

“Nightmares.” Dougal snorted. “Those fairies don’t know anything about nightmares—”

“What are youtalkingabout?” she cut in. Periwinkle looked frantically from the healer to the hall doors to the glade spread out around them, her panic sharp enough to rattle her teeth.

Worst of all, she felt torn in two.

She didn’t understand what Dougal had done, or why he was so suddenly, brutally furious. Her pulse raced thinking of the fairies trapped inside the hall, inside their nightmares.

But with those nightmares so horribly close, she was reminded of her own dark dreams about the rot in the Pixie Dust Root. Of the dread she’d been feeling for days, and what she and Weaver still needed to do.

“Weaver,” she said. “What about the root? I want to help everyone here, but first we have to go heal the rot and save the tree.”

Weaver looked up at her, eyes bereft. A sharp gust of windtugged forlornly at his hair, rushing through the juniper trees on the edge of the glade.

The longer he didn’t speak, the more sharply Periwinkle felt like she was falling and her wings weren’t going to catch her.

Dread beat a fast, heavy drum in her chest as she turned to Dougal, thinking about the last thing that Dewey had said.

“Dougal.” Her voice trembled. “Why was the Keeper talking about Selene in his nightmares?”

“He must have been feeling guilty.” The healer’s voice was dark. “As well he should.”

“What are you saying?”

Dougal scoffed, jutting a finger toward the hall’s closed doors. “I’m saying every fairy inside is living the nightmare my life has been without Selene. Without knowing where she is. Where shedied.” He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was thick. “What she must have gone through, all alone up on that mountain.”

Periwinkle felt overwhelmed by sadness at the mere idea. But she still didn’t understand. She and Weaver still needed to go.

“Weaver?” she asked again. He said nothing, did nothing. Periwinkle’s wings trembled with a hazy, undefined dread.

She was going to be sick.

The Pixie Dust Root: it was what all of this had been about. It was why they had gone looking for the scissors and the spindle. It was why she had let Weaver through her door and into her dreams.

Weaver shook his head. “Periwinkle,” he said again.

Her fear was so strong she could taste it in her mouth.

He’d barely used her real name at first. Now it seemed to be all he could say.

But looking at Weaver, not moving, hanging his head—at Dougal, seething with satisfied anger—her own name in that naked, broken tone was all she needed to hear.

Suddenly, her thoughts spun together and away from her.

Selene.

The storm.

Snow Globe Mountain.

The nightmares.

She thought of the way Dougal had wrapped the hall in nightmare thread, just like she and Weaver had done to the Pixie Dust Root in last night’s dream.

And finally, Periwinkle understood.

Her wings seemed to stop working for a moment. She landed hard, feeling heavy with horror.