Page 97 of Wings of Reverie

“I’ll help,” Periwinkle said. And when she slid her hands into the bowl, she gave a quiet gasp.

Her dreams were encouragingly durable beneath her fingertips. But more surprising was the shimmering magic they released in the bowl full of moonlight, fizzing and sparkling from Periwinkle’s palms all the way up to her wingtips, rendering her dreams even more clearly in her thoughts and senses.

“I know. I feel like I’m swimming inside your mind,” Weaver said hoarsely. Working at the tapestry in the bowl, his fingers brushed hers. Linked with hers, slowly. Goose bumps prickled over Periwinkle’s skin as he met her gaze.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

Weaver shrugged, glancing down at the basin and back to Periwinkle’s face. “What can you really think about when you’re faced with this much beauty?” he asked softly. “I’m just taking it all in.”

A moment later, both of them went back to work. But every now and again, Periwinkle would look up to find his eyes on her, deep and watchful as midnight.

When the tapestry was fulled, Weaver lifted it from the bowl and took it to the stretching frame. Forearms straining, he hung it from the hooks, where it glittered like a winter sunset.

And there it was. Spun fine, perfectly woven, stretching out on the frame, and thickened by fulling so not a single nightmare could escape it. Periwinkle ran a hand gingerly over the weaving, taking one last look at her dreams.

The snowball fight with Gliss and Spike. Coating the trees in the Frost Forest with sugar. Flying as fast as Selene through the woods.

Weaver, fighting off her last nightmare.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “You did beautiful work.” With a patched-together loom, Periwinkle’s dreams, the spindle, and the web, he had created something truly magical and rare.

Beside her, Weaver slid his hands into his pockets, looking uncharacteristically nervous. “I just want to undo some of the mistakes I’ve made,” he said. “To use my talent for something good. Something pure.” He glanced hesitantly down at Periwinkle, cheeks flushed.

This was who he’d been meant to be all along. Not a catcher and keeper of nightmares, but a spinner of dreams. A weaver of reverie, with stories in his hands and stars in his eyes.

Again, she felt that pull in her chest.

“How does it feel?” she asked. There was yearning on his face as he cupped her jaw and leaned his forehead against hers, in his voice when he finally answered.

“It feels like magic,” he said. “It feels like being you.”

Looking into Weaver’s luminous eyes, feeling their noses brush and their breath mingle, Periwinkle thought she might forget how to breathe.

He’d finally seen it. All the beauty and goodness she’d wanted to show him from the very beginning.

The web and the workshop—she knew they’d been the end of their quest.

But it had been Weaver she’d found at the end of the thread.

30

They found Harlow waiting out in the gap in the mountainside, right where they’d left her. But Periwinkle and Weaver left Stella’s workshop feeling much different from when they’d arrived.

“Let’s go, Harlow!” Weaver called, glancing back toward the entrance as he hitched her up to the sled.

Periwinkle knew he hated to leave. She also knew he’d be back, and soon. And as they left, she felt her heart rise.

Because the wind up on Snow Globe Mountain was high. But the sky—the sky was finally clear. With Harlow running downhill, on a path they’d already ridden over, they went back more quicklythan they’d gone out, and Periwinkle couldn’t help remembering the night she’d dreamed she was Selene knifing down the mountain like a gust of wind.

Still, she was counting the minutes as they tore back over the path, back toward Juniper Glade. The Keeper, Lord Milori, so many others—their friends had already been trapped inside their nightmares for far too long. The moment they crossed the line of junipers, Periwinkle and Weaver jumped down from the sled—and Harlow took off, dragging it behind her.

“Where is she going?” Weaver asked. But it didn’t matter. Even a little way from the hall doors, they could hear the fairies trapped in their nightmares.

Harlow was gone. But Periwinkle and Weaver’s job was inside. And they found the hall worse than they’d left it.

Legs had bound up the nightmare scraps before they left. But the nightmare-thread was thick and wiry, slick as oil and tougher than snakeskin, and just like Weaver said had happened before, the spider silk had burned away in contact with it. Nightmares flowed through the room like smoke, rampaging among the sleeping—but not resting—winter fairies.

“This is over,” Weaver said, looking around the room with a shake of his head. “We’re finishing this.” Periwinkle held her breath as he produced the dream tapestry from his jacket pocket, unfolding it and handing her two corners. She took them, extending her arms, and the two of them fluttered into the air above the hideous purple scraps of nightmare-thread.