Page 10 of Wings of Reverie

Periwinkle hesitated. “I found something,” she said. “Near Spring one evening.”

His eyes narrowed. “What did you find?”

“Nothing. I mean—well, not nothing.” She was babbling now. “Something. But I find stuff all the time. It’s kind of my thing.”

“Okay, Sparkles.” He exhaled slowly through his nose. “Specifically, what did you find that you think caused you to start dreaming?”

Sparkles?Periwinkle’s hackles went up, but she pushed past her irritation. “It looked sort of like—” Then she stopped and nodded at the light-colored dreams Weaver still held cradled in his palm. “Like that.”

The dream was like a soft white-petaled flower, or a tuft of cotton. Like fiber made of shimmer and light and color.

It looked like the thing she’d picked up off the ground three short months before.

“I found it near the border of Spring. And when I picked it up, it melted into my hand. Inside my skin. The dreams started after that.”

She was whispering, though they were the only two there in the woods. But Periwinkle wouldn’t have broken the delicate quiet between them any more than she would have shredded a bird’s nest or shattered a line of icicles.

In the wide, strange light of the moon, Periwinkle almostthought she could have been dreaming then, except for the piercing look Weaver was giving her from beneath his eyelashes.

“What were you dreaming about tonight?” Weaver asked again.

Periwinkle didn’t particularly want to talk about her nightmare. But she remembered at once where sleep had taken her.

In her dream, she’d been frosting a field on the Mainland with Spike and Gliss. It had been early morning, the grass spiky and dry and winter-pale, the sky as white as a pearl. The air had been so cold and clear that Periwinkle could see the breath of a family of soft-eyed cows trundling out of their barn. And there had been something in her hand—something like a thread, bright as gold, both running ahead of her and trailing behind like her glow.

When the world had turned a hazy shade of violet, as it always did during her nightmares, everything but that thread had disappeared. Somehow, then, Periwinkle had known she was back in the Winter Woods.

Somehow, she had sensed danger.

But the thread hadn’t left her. She’d held on to it as she flew over woods and glades, as the wind had blown up and batted her around, carrying the overpowering smell of something gone sick or rotten. She’d been nearly to the Pixie Dust Root and the well when she’d heard a horrible creaking, wrenching sound.

Periwinkle had woken up after that. But even now, remembering the dream turned her stomach.

She crossed her arms, shifting uncomfortably beneath his scrutiny. “What if I don’t want to tell you?”

Weaver seemed to decide something, at that point.

He took a little bag from his pocket, tucked the light dreams inside it, and put it away as he’d done with the dark dreams before. Then, with a flutter of his wings, he moved deeper into the woods.

“Where are you going?” Periwinkle asked.

“Follow me and find out,” he said with a shrug, hands in his pockets. “Or don’t.”

He flew into the woods without a backward glance.

For just a minute, Periwinkle thought about letting him go and taking herself back home. About going back to her bed, back to sleep, to wake up ready for the Mainland like she’d meant to do all along.

But Periwinkle had never known how to let things lie. She’d always wanted to know what magic lay hidden, waiting to be found. She wanted to understand her dreams, and where they’d come from, and what they meant.

She’d have been lying if she’d said she didn’t want to know more about Weaver, too.

She watched his retreating back as he flew away, the wind catching at his dark curls, the starlight catching on his wings.

Then Periwinkle pushed herself into the air and flew after him, wondering if she’d completely lost her mind.

4

In the silver light of the moon on the snow, the Pixie Dust Well was a pool of gold.