Page 62 of Wings of Reverie

“She’s already got a gown for the ball,” Weaver said flatly. Periwinkle reached for his hand as Alder went hurriedly back to his work.

“Is something wrong?” she asked quietly.

“Sorry.” Weaver grimaced. “I didn’t mean to snap at him like that. I’ve got a headache again. Like I told you, they make me irritable.”

“Can you talk to a healer?”

“I have,” Weaver said, narrowing his eyes at her. “But recently, I met this very opinionated frost-talent, and now my head aches all the time.” Periwinkle rolled her eyes, and Weaver squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry. I’m fine.”

“Sorry I got Alder’s name wrong.”

“I’m actually thrilled you got Alder’s name wrong. I’m going to start calling him Onyx until he stops staring at you.”

Periwinkle fought a blush. “If he’s been watching me, I haven’t noticed at all,” she managed to say.

Weaver didn’t answer this. But when he turned back to his loom, Periwinkle thought he was grinning.

“So,” she said. “I have a gown? What does it look like?”

“Mm.” Weaver shrugged. “You’ll have to see.”

“Am I going to look pretty in it?”

“Periwinkle, you would be the most beautiful fairy in Pixie Hollow if you wore the ugliest outfit in the whole of the Winter Woods.”

Weaver didn’t look up. He was staring at his hands, planted on the loom’s frame. But Periwinkle bit her lip again, feeling her face get redder, wishing they were having this conversation somewhere less crowded.

“If you keep saying things like that, I’m going to think you like me,” she finally said. “Or I’m going to think you’re preparing me to wear the ugliest dress in the whole of the Winter Woods.”

When Weaver threw back his head and laughed, every fairy in Floss’s workshop turned to stare. Periwinkle felt almost giddy with happiness when he bent toward her ear.

“The gown won’t be as beautiful as you,” he said quietly. “But it’s going to be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever made.”

Periwinkle pressed her lips together. She wanted to say so many things, to ask so many questions she didn’t know how to phrase. And she was desperate to tell Weaver what she’d found in the Pixie Dust Tree book and go search for the Sapphire Mine. But the day had only just begun in Floss’s workshop, and everyone seemed to need an extra pair of hands.

So Periwinkle got to work. She melted ice for the fullers, wiped up spills for the dyeing fairies, wound bobbins of thread as the spinners completed them, re-frosted iced tea glasses. When Spangle had an unfortunate tussle with a dress form (a real one) and broke several of the vines that shaped its bust and waist, Periwinkle salvaged it by frosting the broken bits back together. She even dashed over to the produce depot, run by a sparrow man named Alpine, to get Summer blackberries when someone ran out while dyeing a deep purple gown.

As she flittered around answering requests for help, she was as amazed as ever by every talent’s work, all the beauty they created,everything they meant to Pixie Hollow. But again and again, she came back to Weaver.

Nothing about the chaos of the workshop seemed to distract him. He wove on the loom as if he were listening to it tell a story, bent close so he wouldn’t miss even a moment. His careful eye caught every error he made, his nimble fingers unpicking the material when he did. Even the silver-thread embroidery he worked around the collar at the pomegranate’s crown was flawless, minimal but beautiful.

As he bent over his work, Periwinkle found she couldn’t stop staring at the curls at the nape of his neck. She wanted so badly to go back to Weaver’s bench and waste time with him.

Sheneededto get ahold of herself.

It was lucky that the baking-talent fairy from Lattice’s Bakery showed up just then.

“Periwinkle!” Floss exclaimed, taking the twine-wrapped box from the baking-talent. “They said you had these sent over? How thoughtful!” Hungry fairies swarmed around Floss and the box, calling out their thanks as they seized on the frosted cardamom knots and crumble-topped cinnamon cakes inside. Periwinkle was just about to take one to Weaver when she overheard two fulling fairies, Scrub and Sluice, near the sinks at the back.

“I just don’t understand why she wants to talk to him so much,” Scrub said, biting into a cardamom knot. “His Arrival ceremony was embarrassing.”

Jingles. Periwinkle wouldn’t have thought it was possible to sound so resentful while eating frosting. She kept her eyes down, staring hard into the pastry box, but she felt an unpleasant rush of heat when she heard her name.

“Periwinkle wasn’t there. She hadn’t arrived yet,” Sluice said. “But I remember it. Glacier-talent, no. Frost-talent, no. Icicle-talent, no. Winter-animal-talent—”

“Light, healing, music, helping, fast-flying—it was like the ceremony didn’t even know what to do for him!” Scrub exclaimed. “So it just sort of weakly offered up his craft-talent, likeokay, here, have this. He’s a passable weaver, but—”

Passable? Jealousy made people say ridiculous things. Maybe Weaver had had a point. Maybe some peopleweren’tas nice as they thought they were.