Page 35 of Wings of Reverie

Was she looking for a book? Probably, if she was in the Hall of Winter. But Periwinkle couldn’t remember which one, or what about.

Suddenly, though, she found herself in an empty aisle.

Not a minute before, the hall had been noisy and pleasantly crowded. But a stillness settled over it now, a quiet comfort that existed only when Periwinkle was alone with her stories. Like being out in the woods, alone with the animals and the sound of the wind through the trees.

She walked between the shelves, trailing her fingers over spines, listening to their mumbling and musing. Then Periwinkle caught sight of something gleaming away down at the end of the aisle.

The thing shone like a spreading sunrise, twinkled like stars scattered across the sky. Whatever it was, she’d never seen it in the hall before.

Was it the work of a light-talent? A frost-talent? Periwinkle squinted, trying to get a better look.

But just then, a gust of wind struck her back. She frowned, then looked behind her.

Why should there be wind inside the hall?

And had the air been violet all along? Or was the lavender fog just then beginning to gather?

Periwinkle wasn’t sure what. But something was coming.

Thunder rolled, and so did the earth beneath her feet. The shelves on either side of the aisle swayed sickeningly, seeming to melt and deteriorate right before her eyes. Periwinkle lifted off the ground, wings fluttering, but the rising wind made flight feel chancy, too.

She turned. Behind her, trees burst through the floor—thetree, the Pixie Dust Tree. Then the scene shifted, and the hall was gone, the ice tiles beneath her feet turning to snow and the twisted, collapsed shelves to enormous roots. Periwinkle found herself looking at the Pixie Dust Root, impossibly close to the tree, with Winter’s well beneath it.

The wind rose, kicking up a cloud of pixie dust—not a sprinkle, but a wild spray. When the dust landed on the roots of the Pixie Dust Tree, they tore themselves from the ground and began to float eerily in the air, like the snaking legs of some strange animal.

Then the Pixie Dust Root twisted itself off the tree. It happened just like that. Spoiled sap leaked from the tree’s open wound, sickly sweet and rotten-smelling.

A crash came, so loud it hurt her ears. Shielding her head with her arms, Periwinkle turned and saw the Pixie Dust Tree had collapsed to the ground.

She stared wildly around for an escape, horrified, heart racing. And then—she saw it.

The Hall of Winter was still gone. But the broad gleam of light she’d noticed before, whatever it was, hadn’t disappeared.

Periwinkle raced toward the light with her wings straining. Whenthe wind got too strong to fly, she ran, then crawled. She knew she had to reach it, one way or another, to get safely through the storm.

The last thing Periwinkle wondered before she woke up was this: Was she chasing the light? Or was the light reaching for her?

10

Periwinkle woke alone again.

She still hadn’t asked Weaver to stay, or anything. But Periwinkle had wondered if they might go looking for the scissors today, and she was frustrated to find him gone before she could even bring up the idea.Thenshe remembered she had to go to Floss’s, and she felt even more annoyed.

Worse than her irritation, as Periwinkle woke up by herself, and got ready by herself, and flew by herself over a crowd of fairies taking turns sledding down into the Frost Forest, it was hard to ignore her own loneliness. What were Spike and Gliss doing justthen? Had they gone far to the north, where the leaves and temperatures would’ve been quick to drop? Or were they somewhere farther south, where autumn’s colors and golden warmth had stuck around just a little while longer?

Periwinkle felt a bit lost when she stepped inside the workshop in Snowlight Square. But when Floss popped up in front of her, smiling, she came back to herself with a start. The answering smile she gave the sewing-talent was almost—almost—real.

“Good morning, Periwinkle,” Floss said brightly. Her long white curls were held back with an ivy vine, and though the sun was barely up, Periwinkle thought she was flittering around even more quickly than usual. “I’m glad you’re here!”

“Me too,” Periwinkle told her friend. “I can’t believe I’ve never come to your workshop before! This place is amazing.”

The walls, floor, and workbenches in Floss’s craft-talent workshop were sweet-smelling cedar, and suncatchers hung low on its first level for the fairies sewing busily against dress forms or embroidery hoops. Bolts of material and bundles of eucalyptus leaves and pine needles were piled against the walls, and crystals and feathers and trim in a hundred colors covered everything else that wasn’t moving. Up on the second floor, beneath more suncatchers, other fairies twisted wads of colorful fiber into thread with spinning wheels and what Periwinkle guessed might be spindles, while others wound lengths of thread around and around bits of—something.

“Here in the front are our sewists and spinners,” Floss explained. “The spinners work with drop spindles and spinning wheels and wind their thread onto bobbins. Over there, at the back of this main level, they’re fulling material—that’s how you shape its fibers—and making dye.” She gestured at a long sink on the workshop’s far wall, where some fairies were pounding woven flax or pine needles or cotton in melted ice, and others were crushing and blending fruits, leaves, and barks with mortars and pestles.

The last few craft-talents stood at a row of big wooden frames. Periwinkle drew up short.

“Over here,” Floss continued, “we’ve got looms for turning thread into cloth. Looms are worked by—”