Page 9 of Wings of Reverie

Obvious, like seeing dawn on the horizon when the second star was still out. Simple, like waking to find yourself wearing the aurora borealis like a crown.

Just four little words. And yet, hearing them, Periwinkle could hardly breathe.

“You dream, too?” Her voice sounded airless. “How?”

The sparrow man frowned. “It started right after my Arrival. Didn’t you…?”

He trailed off. When Periwinkle didn’t fill in the silence, he spoke again. “I was nearby when I heard you cry out. I thought someone might be hurt.”

“No, I’m not h—What isthat?” Periwinkle yelped.

A spider the size of her pinky nail had just hopped out of the sparrow man’s breast pocket. It sat on his shoulder now, glowing iridescent and staring at her out of eight liquid black eyes.

“He’s a spider.”

“I know he’s a spider.” Periwinkle grimaced, fluttering backward a bit. She couldn’t decide if she was more curious or repelled. “Why is he on your shoulder? Why is he the same color as my dreams?”

The sparrow man shrugged. “I think heisa dream. I haven’t quite figured him out. But I woke up one day, and there he was. His name is Legs.” He paused. “Because, you know. He has so many legs.”

“Yeah,” she said faintly. “I got it.” Periwinkle felt almost dizzy, like she might drift out of her own body and float wingless into the sky.

For three whole months, she’d kept her dreaming to herself. She’d been living half inside her own head, mesmerized by what her mind could do, unable to tell anyone else for fear of being misunderstood or losing the dreams completely.

And here he had appeared, like magic, somehow able to understand without any explanation at all.

She realized then that she knew what to call his spider, but not him. “Um, my name’s Periwinkle, by the way,” she added uncertainly. “I’m a frost-talent. I—”

“I know who you are.” He dipped his head, eyes significant, never leaving hers. “I’m Weaver.”

She bit her lip. “I know I recognize you. We’ve just never—I mean, I’ve never—”

“We move in different circles,” he said. “It’s fine.”

He said it almost neutrally. Periwinkle might not have noticed the hint of sarcasm in his voice if she hadn’t been paying attention. But Periwinklewaspaying attention, and for her part, she felt more than a hint of embarrassment.

Sheshouldknow him; the Winter Woods weren’t impossiblylarge. And it hadn’t escaped her that it was the second time that night she’d met someone and not known their name.

But Weaver ignored her sheepishness, looking again to the lights drifting over her head, floating higher and higher like snowflakes caught on a breeze. “What were you dreaming about?”

Periwinkle tensed. “Why?”

“Long story,” Weaver said. “Hold still.”

Periwinkle held more than still; she held her breath. The world seemed to slow around her as he stepped close, slid a glove over each long-fingered, broad-knuckled hand, and caught at the dreams, pulling them out of the air to cup them in his palms.

He worked at them carefully, separating the dark-colored dreams from the lighter ones, their glow reflected in the deep wells of his eyes. Then he put the dark ones in a black spider-silk pouch and stuffed it in his pocket.

Periwinkle’s breath caught. “How did you do that? You touched them, and they didn’t melt away.”

“Of course they didn’t.” Weaver frowned. “I’m a dream-talent. I work with dreams.”

Periwinkle had never heard of a dream-talent. She thought hard, heart beginning to race. “My dreaming doesn’t feel like a talent. It’s not like when I’m working frost magic,” she said. “Frosting is something I do. Dreaming is just something that happens to me.”

It didn’t sound like itjust happenedto Weaver.

It sounded like maybe he could help her understand what was going on inside her head.

“Ah.” His shoulders fell, almost imperceptibly. “So if your dreams didn’t start when you arrived, when did they start?”