Page 39 of Wings of Starlight

She reached out to take the book from him, but he gasped. “Swap out your gloves first, if you don’t mind. It’s very fragile.”

Milori muttered something that sounded likearchivists.

Clarion peeled off her damp mittens and slipped on the pair of gloves the Keeper handed her. The book was delicate beneath her touch, the spine groaning as she cracked it open. It promptly coughed up a cloud of dust. She leafed through the delicate pages, skimming over the illuminated drop caps and the strange little doodles of monsters in the margins. The illustrations were indeed striking, framing handwriting in a language she had not seen before. Amorphous black shapes with cruel violet eyes stared back at her. Here and there, golden swirls of magic pierced the darkness.

She closed the book again, staring down at the gilded runes shining on the front cover. But nothing about them grabbed her. They did not rearrange themselves into meaning. She’d let them down. How could she have ever thought otherwise? She should have told Milori from the start that she couldn’t access the full range of her governing-talent magic. Her stomach twisted with shame. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I can help you.”

Both their faces fell.

“I suppose it was a long shot.” Milori’s brow furrowed in thought. “But then…”

“You have an idea?” the Keeper asked.

“The runes on the Hall of Winter’s doors activate at my touch,” he replied. “Perhaps the book will respond to Clarion’s.”

The Keeper shrugged. “It’s certainly worth a try.”

One more try, then. Clarion slipped off her gloves and set them aside. She drew in a deep breath. This was it, she supposed. If this—whateverthiswas—didn’t work, then how could she ever hope to master her magic?No. Just one more try.With trembling fingers, Clarion laid her palm against the surface of the book.

Golden light shot out from it.

The Keeper shouted, half in surprise, half in delight. Even Milori’s face was bathed in its warm light, his eyes sparkling with triumph.

Clarion withdrew her hand, but something of their wonder had seized hold of her, too. She felt almost giddy, watching the air twinkle with lingering magic. “What’s happening?”

“Not a clue!” Once again, the not-knowing seemed to thrill the Keeper. “Try reading it now.”

When Clarion opened the book again, the writing on each page glowed gold with her magic. Pixie dust lifted from the ink, glimmering in the darkness like starlight. Through the scintillating haze, the words slowly took shape in her mind.

“Long ago, when the Pixie Dust Tree was still but a sapling, children’s dreams—both good and bad—traveled over Pixie Hollow,” she said—or did she? Clarion could hardly tell if the voice she heard was her own, because the words certainly were not. They slipped out as though by recitation; the story unfolded in her mind so clearly, she could almost see it like a reflection on still water.

It was a legend, she realized. It went like this:

Each night, as they crossed the skies above the Never Sea, those dreams knotted together and lit up the night like an aurora borealis. In those times, there were dream-talent fairies who gathered up the dreams like shorn fleece and brought them back to their homes. All through the night, they spun dreams into thread on their spinning wheels. Come morning, they gathered up their thread and wove it through the branches of the young Pixie Dust Tree so that the children’s hopes and wishes protected and nourished the tree as it grew.

Spinning dream-thread was long, arduous work; nightmares had to be separated out in the process, for they contained a sinister power. They lay on the workroom floor like scraps of black fabric. In the daylight, they burned away, but one night, a tenacious few escaped the notice of the dream-talents. With that glimmer of freedom, they tore through Pixie Hollow.

They could change shape like smoke but seemed to remember the shape of the fears that birthed them. Monsters, insects, vicious dogs—any beast a child could conjure—attacked that night. They lashed out with rending claws and teeth. But more terrible still was their magic. Any fairy who was struck by it fell into an unbreakable slumber, tormented by their worst fears. And just before daybreak—when the Nightmares would burn away like fog—they found refuge in the darkest places, biding their time until night fell once more.

The Queen of Pixie Hollow was consumed with worry for her subjects—and for the fragile Pixie Dust Tree, only just a sapling still putting out its first leaves. The dream-talents could not destroy the Nightmares, and so, they advised the queen to build a prison, one they would seal with a barrier woven from dream magic. The only question that remained was where to put it.

She and her ministers debated for hours—until the queen’s dear friend, the Lord of Winter, offered to house it deep in Winter, as his realm was farthest from the vulnerable tree. He would watch over it himself to ensure that no Nightmare ever again escaped.

With that one act, he gained a new title: the Warden of the Winter Woods.

One night, the dream-talents set a trap for the loose Nightmares, ensnaring them in nets of dream-thread. They transported them to the Winter Woods, where the frost-talents had bored a hole into a frozen lake. They plunged the Nightmares into those dark waters, then laid the tapestry of the dream-talents’ barrier. The moment the frost-talents repaired the ice, sealing away the Nightmares’ terrible power, the slumbering fairies awoke. From that day forward, all Nightmares were transported to their watery prison in the Winter Woods.

There, the monsters squabbled among one another like starving animals—until, on one visit, the dream-talents realized they had fallen unsettlingly quiet. Over centuries, the oldest of the Nightmares, feeding on all that trapped bitterness and despair, had grown powerful enough to unite them. Like a queen bee at the center of her hive, it commanded the others, mindless but for their longing to escape—to destroy. It terrified the dream-talents, what they had allowed to fester.

When the Pixie Dust Tree grew to its full size, dreams no longer lit the skies. Over time, fewer and fewer dream-talents arrived in Pixie Hollow—until there was one, then none at all.

“Such is the way of nature,” Clarion murmured. “Things rise and fall according to its designs.”

With that, the book ended. The magic coursing through her went dormant, and the pixie dust cloud shattered, raining softly over the table. Its warm glow on the ice faded, and the eerie blue light filled the room yet again.

None of them spoke at first.

Clarion could hardly process it: an entire talent of fairy, lost to time, that could have roused her subjects and contained the Nightmares. What were they meant to do now?