Page 49 of Wings of Reverie

“It looks like this was going to be a lute, eventually.” Weaverturned his head then, bringing their faces unexpectedly close together. “Do you typically hover over Fletcher like this?”

Periwinkle looked away, giving a cough as she created a little space between them. Weaver’s mouth quirked up at one corner.

“Why do you get so stiff when anyone brings him up?” he asked. “Aren’t you two together? Or as good as?”

Periwinkle rounded the table, moving away from him. But now it was Weaver’s turn to trail close behind her, looking at her curiously. “It must befascinatingwatching him make icicles,” he said. “Just one icicle after another. A slow, steady drip. Convenient, because I’m pretty sure that’s what his thoughts sound like.”

Periwinkle couldn’t help it. She winced.

Weaver pointed at her, glee all over his face. “I knew it!” he said. “Iknewyou knew he was boring!”

“Fletcher is—” Boring. He was relentlessly nice and deeply, truly boring to Periwinkle. “Fletcher is reliable.”

“Uh-huh. So—another way to say boring. Look, everyone in the Winter Woods knows that the only interesting thing about Fletcher is the way his features are arranged on his face.” Weaver grinned at her, somehow victorious and disbelieving at the same time. “I knew you didn’t have a thing for him. Periwinkle, you candream. You are adventurous and clever.” He circled farther around the table, nearer to her. “You know what I bet Fletcher loves? Other than staring in the mirror?”

“He’s not vain!”

Weaver didn’t acknowledge this. “Lukewarm tea. Not hot orcold, just somewhere in between,” he said. “And butter knives. And two o’clock in the afternoon. Even numbers. The color beige.”

“Those arenobody’s favorite things.”

“Yeah, because they’reboring,” Weaver said. “This is what I’m telling you.”

“Why are you constantly attacking him?”

“Why are you constantly defending him?”

“I’m not!” she exclaimed.

“You are!” Weaver planted his hands on the bench, voice dwindling down to an annoyed grumble. “I don’t know why everyone says you’re together. He’s got all the personality of a boiled potato,” he muttered. “You could never be with someone like that.”

Periwinkle scoffed as she flittered up toward the second level. But inside, she was glowing like a suncatcher.

She couldn’t help looking back at him over her shoulder as she followed the trail of spiders climbing the walls. When she did, she found Weaver running his hands over the vine arches, the spider-silk bed, like he needed to touch everything to understand it. Like, despite what they’d already found, he was still looking for something.

She wished she knew what it was.

The workshop upstairs was a lot like the Bobbin Wood outside; the ceiling was just as thick with spiderwebs. It was only when Periwinkle looked closely that she noticed the single line of spider silk trailing down from the ceiling to a bench along one wall, where the thread’s end was wrapped around a half-full bobbin. The benchwas covered with bobbins, in fact, lots of them empty, some of them full; Periwinkle thought the whole upstairs must have been set up specifically for spider silk collection.

But the wall opposite the staircase interested her even more.morpheus’s spiders, someone had carved neatly into the birchwood near the ceiling. Below that were tally marks—and more tally marks. Hundreds, easily.

“Weaver!” she called. “Look at this.”

He was beside her in a jingle, wings stirring her hair. “What is it?” he asked. Then he relaxed.

“Morpheus comes up in the Keeper’s dream-magic book,” Periwinkle said. “And the fairy tale you read us last night.”

Weaver gave her a wistful smile, at that. Periwinkle returned it. The story hadn’t ended happily.

“Anyway, like you said, it looks like they were collecting spider silk. If Morpheus made many of those little animal beds, I’m sure they needed a lot of it.”

“Ordinary spider silk. But the spiders, not so much. I think—” Weaver hesitated, brow furrowed. “Look. I told you I think Legs is a dream. And I assumed he’d beenmydream. But what if he came from here?”

Periwinkle nodded at the wall. The spiders were moving again, over and across the tally marks. “Do you think Morpheus, whoever he was, dreamed him?”

“Maybe,” Weaver said. “The bigger mystery is why Legs decided to come to me.”

Not really a mystery.Periwinkle pressed her lips together to keep from saying it. “I’m glad you decided you were brave enough to trust him out in the woods today,” she offered instead.