Page 48 of Wings of Reverie

Then, away through the stillness of the forest, another glimmering spider dropped down from the canopy of spiderwebs and hovered at their eyeline, like it was waiting for something.

Both of the spiders leapt away from Periwinkle’s hand, as delicate as dancers in a ballet, leaving trails of spider silk swaying weightlessly in the air behind them. One jump, two, three, and they had joined the spider hanging in the distance. “Legs!” Weaver called, an anxious note in his voice.

“Let’s go,” she said urgently. “We have to follow them.”

“But the directions in the book said nothing about spiders,” Weaver said. “We don’t know what they’re doing. We might end up going the wrong way.”

Periwinkle shook her head. “These spiders, this forest, they’re our only guides. We were told to find the Bobbin Wood, and I think this is it.” She gestured at the cobwebs overhead, wrapped around the tree branches like the spools of thread in the workshop. “And now it feels likeit’sguidingus.”

“And you trust it?” Though his wings were already carrying him toward where Legs had gone, Weaver’s dark eyes were surprised—worried.

“Trust the forest? Trust the dream magic?” Periwinkle cocked her head. “You know I do. Just like I know you trust Legs.” Weaver grimaced.

If she trusted anything in the world, in Never Land or on the Mainland or anywhere else, it was the magic of Pixie Hollow. The dream magic that had found her.

She was determined to show Weaver how deep and true it ran.

Then Periwinkle stilled. Because a new thought had occurred to her.

“Weaver, you said you think Legs is a dream,” she said slowly. “What if this is what the clue means?”

Periwinkle didn’t exactly intend to reach for his hand again. But she did, and he let her. So she felt the moment he understood.

Weaver’s eyes narrowed.“Chase the dreams,”he said slowly.

The look he gave her next was like sunrise. Awake, and glowing.

Weaver’s hand tightened around hers as he and Periwinkle took off after Legs and the other spiders, who were still waiting. And then the spiders were off again, too.

The dream spiders threaded their way through the forest as quick as shooting stars, three tiny points of rainbow light tossing out spider silk trails for the fairies to follow. Periwinkle and Weaver raced after them, their wings hardly fast enough to keep up with the jumping legs of the spiders. Periwinkle felt like she might be a shooting star, too, there in the pitch-black forest with the spiderweb canopy at its roof.

The deeper inside the Bobbin Wood she and Weaver flew, thelarger the trees were around them—and the more shimmering dream spiders joined Legs and the other two spiders up ahead. A dozen, a score, a hundred—they dropped gracefully from the canopy above, leapt into the fray, and glided ahead of the two fairies, a mass of rainbow dream light trailing color and silk through the silent wood. It was a rare and beautiful sight, one Periwinkle knew she would never forget in all her life.

On and on they flew, rising, falling, threading through trees, slicing through thickets. And then—there it was.

A hollow birch, at the end of the spider-silk trail. A curtain of ivy and thorns and more spider silk partly hid the opening in the tree trunk. Periwinkle and Weaver peered inside, hearts thundering.

Periwinkle knew at once. They had found the workshop.

She hesitated, though, before they went inside. “Thank you,” she said haltingly, looking to the spiders. They had lighted on the trunk of the birch, shimmering above and around the entrance, watching the fairies with so many mirror-bright black eyes. “Thank you for showing us the way.”

The spiders didn’t answer, exactly. But Legs—somehow, of all the spiders, Periwinkle still knew who he was—seemed to cock his head as they ducked inside the hollow.

Periwinkle held her suncatcher higher as the spiders followed them, their soft glow lighting the inside of the workshop, and she and Weaver looked around themselves.

The entire place was carved out of the blond wood of the birchtree, two levels connected by a delicately shaped wooden staircase. Snow lay in soft piles over the workshop floor and its workbenches, like dust in long-forgotten corners, and half-finished projects lay scattered across the tables.

No one had been here for a long, long time.

“What is all this?” Periwinkle asked. The spiders moved soundlessly through the room, a hundred little points of iridescence in the dim.

Weaver gestured to the smooth blond workbench in front of him, covered in ivy vines trained into arches with rainbow-colored string. “These might have been doorframes for animal burrows,” he said. “And I think this was an animal bed.” He nodded at a nest of spider silk shot through with more rainbow-colored thread, about the size of a hedgehog or a chipmunk.

“They were making things to help animals sleep better,” Periwinkle said wonderingly. “Do you think those are dreams?” She pointed to the pieces of rainbow-colored string fixed to some of the projects.

“I’d guess the thread’s a blend,” he said. “Meaning it’s been madewithdreams, but combined with something. Probably spider silk, by the looks of this place.” Then he bent toward another table, scattered with birchwood pieces carved into swirls and curves. “Interesting.”

“What?” Periwinkle flittered behind him, like things would seem clearer if she looked at them over his shoulder.