Page 94 of Wings of Reverie

The Care and Keeping of Dream-Talents

Flax, Cotton, and Spider Silk: A Study in Dream-Thread Alloys

The Dreaming Mind of the Human Child

Lute Playing for Beginners

Harp Playing for Beginners

Drumming for Beginners

Snow Globe Mountain’s Log-book (Vol. 13)

The Weaving Patterns of Spiders

29

Weaver set down the shattered pieces of the loom and held his head in his hands.

Periwinkle stared in horror. “Broken?”

Her voice was a whisper. Her thoughts were shouting.

Weaver nodded heavily. “The story in the book said the Snow Globe Mountain workshop was never the same again after Morpheus didn’t come back. This must’ve been what it meant.” He braced himself on the edge of the table, eyes glittering with unshed tears. “It’s all over. And it’s all my fault.”

Periwinkle fluttered to the other side of the table, tracing allthe broken pieces. Her wings were trembling; her stomach felt full of lead.

Was this how Stella and Orion had felt when their friend hadn’t come home from the Mainland? After months spent planning and creating his drum, after years spent repairing it—all that trying, and they’d still lost their friend.

Maybe they had given up, in the end. Someday, Periwinkle and Weaver would learn what had happened, whatever of Stella’s secrets she’d chosen to leave behind. But there was no time to read the end of her story now.

As Periwinkle looked out one of the cave windows, toward the second star, she imagined all her friends hard at work on the Mainland. She imagined Stella sitting in this room long ago, putting all her imagination and talent into helping her friend before he left.

And this was when Periwinkle realized something important.

She didn’t know the end of the dream-talents’ story. But she knew the middle. She knew that Stella and Orion and Morpheus had done something with their talent worth telling a story about. Maybe, for now, that knowledge was enough.

Periwinkle gave a sharp inhale, turning toward the table again. “Let me see the loom,” she said.

Weaver pushed it toward her, showing her how the broken bits should’ve fitted together. “But I can’t do anything with this. It’s in pieces.”

Periwinkle just gave him a secret smile. “The solution might be simpler than you think.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean—” She picked up the pieces of the frame, examining them. “This is the Winter Woods. We aren’t warm fairies, and melted ice doesn’t flow in our rivers, and it doesn’t fall from our skies. We have ice, we have snow.”

Gently, just as she’d done with Icaria’s crushed snow sculpture and the dress form Spangle had broken, Periwinkle aimed a wisp of her magic at the loom, at the frame and the little sticks around its edges.

“And,” she said as her frost magic bound the loom together, “we have frost.”

When she was done, she glanced up at Weaver across the table. Starlight twinkled on the geode walls of the cave and in his eyes.

“You fixed it.” He stared at her in wonder, chest rising and falling. “Of course you did.”

She lifted the loom gingerly, checking her work. “It’s not a forever solution. You might want to make a new one someday. But for now…” Her voice trailed off. “Maybe this will work.”

“It will.” His voice was thick as he tugged a pouch from his pocket. Then he laid the luminous skein of dream-thread on the workbench.