Page 86 of Wings of Reverie

Morpheus had struggled to play the lute and the harp. But he could play the drum in time with his voice and the gently beating hearts of the animals he loved, and from the first, he played the instrument well.

Stella and Orion were pleased. They both embraced him, and away with the winter fairies he flew.

And Stella’s work did not fail. Morpheus drummed and sang lullabies for the animals on the Mainland for many years. Even far to the north, the animals letthemselves trust and be tamed by his music, and went gladly to sleep under his care. And every year, before Morpheus returned to the Mainland, Orion would repair the drumhead with a dream-magic needle and thread, or Stella would reweave it, if it was too worn out from playing. A few winter fairies said the animals loved the drum for the northern lights that it resembled. Others insisted it was that the friends’ power at work together—their dream-talent, Orion’s music, Morpheus’s love, and Stella’s clever mind—was simply an unstoppable force.

But one year Morpheus did not come home from the Mainland, and the winter fairies who had traveled with him did not know where he had gone. Stella and Orion waited for months, but at last, they knew their friend was lost to them, and they mourned him greatly.

And the Snow Globe Mountain workshop was never the same again.

26

Periwinkle tore through the air, her thoughts as stormy as the night around her. Snow blew in her eyes, yanked at her skirts. When hot tears blurred her vision, she dried her eyes with the enormous sleeves of her dress.

She wasn’t completely sure where she was heading. But she had the vague idea that the answers she needed now lay near Spring, where all of this had started.

She’d been straining her eyes like this the evening she’d found the dream, she remembered. She had been standing on the border of Winter, looking across at the flowers she would never be able to touch, at the bright sunshine she would never feel on her skin.

Periwinkle had gone looking for springtime. It had felt like a promise from Pixie Hollow itself that she’d found another kind of magic entirely.

Which was why her hurt ran deeper than Weaver’s actions alone could account for.

Since Periwinkle had arrived, she had felt a connection to the things she found. They meant something about the world. They meant something about who she was.

And if her finding the dream magic was nothing but an accident, then that changed the color of everything around her.

Fundamentally, it meant that she’d had it all wrong. She’d foundsomething, sure. But it hadn’t been looking for her.

Coincidence, not fate. Accident, not destiny.

She knew now that the Pixie Dust Tree was safe. But could magic be trusted? Could Periwinkle trust her own judgment? She wasn’t so sure anymore.

Her only hope was getting to the border. If she could get there, if she could call Queen Clarion—

Periwinkle’s eyes were still on the river flowing between Winter and Spring when she slowed to a stop in the air over the Frost Forest.

Queen Clarion couldn’t come. She couldn’t cross into Winter, and neither could the rest of the warm season fairies. Everyone knew this—Periwinkle better than most. No one else could solve this problem for her.

She was completely alone.

Periwinkle sank into the snow and sobbed on her knees.

She had felt safe her whole life in the Winter Woods. She’d believed that magic was real, that it protected everything, that it ran beautiful, true, and deep.

She had believed that the dream magic had brought her Weaver. But that had been a lie.

Weaver had spun her a story, and she’d believed him like a fool. There had been nothing magical about it. It was what had made her think of Fletcher.

Periwinkle hadn’t just mentioned him to frustrate Weaver, though she wasn’t sorry if she had. She’d been thinking of what Spike had said the day before she left. Inevitable, she’d called them.

Because if the dream magic hadn’t brought her and Weaver together, was what she felt for Fletcher the best the magic she’d always believed in could do for destiny, for love, forinevitable? Was that magic more beautiful on the outside than it was on the inside?

In her short life, had she seen all the magic there was to see?

Periwinkle searched her memory, her thoughts, her dreams. Behind her shut eyes, she saw again the nightmare of the Pixie Dust Tree, as shattered as her heart.

But then she remembered the web. The needle, and the thread.

She’d wondered before, but now she knew: Weaver hadn’t sent her those. He wasn’t the light that had always stayed with her in the dark. He’dbroughtthe dark, tailored her nightmares to a perfect fit. They hadn’t come from the obvious jumbles of her daily thoughts, either, because Periwinkle had dreamed of the goldenneedle before she’d ever seen it in the mine, and she’d still never seen anything like the web or the thread in her waking life.