Page 92 of Wings of Reverie

Connecting them to each other, and to something else.

“Find the thread,”she said, and Weaver nodded.

It was nothing she could see to follow, not like in the Bobbin Wood or the Sapphire Mine. No one could have marked it on a map for them. But the feeling was unmistakable.

They hadn’t found the thread. But the thread had found them. And they were meant to find whatever lay at its end.

So the two of them rode on. The sled bumped and juddered over rocky ground and brush, swishing past wildly rocking fir trees and small frozen ponds with leaves and pebbles and debris skittering across their surfaces. The wind bayed, interrupted now and again by Harlow’s own cries, and periodically the path split up ahead of them. But the pull inside Weaver and Periwinkle guided them onward, carrying them around to the second star side of Snow Globe Mountain.

Soon, the path began to climb. The wind beat even harder. “Do you see anything?” Periwinkle called. She blinked hard against the fierce wind, searching desperately for a window or a door or any sign of a fairy’s presence.

Weaver shook his head, hollering over the wind. “Nothing.”

They were just rounding the mountainside when it happened.

A burst of wind kicked up, throwing snow into their eyes. A tree ahead of them crashed onto the trail; Harlow yelped and tore away to the left, knocking the sled off balance.

“Harlow!” Periwinkle cried.

“I’ve got her,” Weaver yelled back. He crouched, then sprang into low flight, landing quickly on Harlow’s back as the sled regained its balance.

But the wind was too strong. Rounding a bend in the trail, thesled’s runners hit a bump and tipped sideways—and Periwinkle, Weaver, and Harlow were flung against the mountainside.

For a moment, Periwinkle was afraid she’d actually hurt herself. She tested her body slowly—wings, back, neck, arms, legs, hands, feet. Finding piece by piece that she was all right, Periwinkle moved slowly to stand. “Weaver?” she called into the storm. “Harlow?” But no response came.

Periwinkle thought of Selene, alone here on Snow Globe Mountain at the end of her life, and felt sick with fear.

But she could also feel the tug of the thread in her chest. It had led them here. She had to keep going.

Squinting through the snow, Periwinkle saw no sign of the sled or her friends. She staggered forward, clinging to the side of the mountain. “Weaver!” she called again. “Harlow!”

Nothing came back to her but the shriek of the wind. She kept moving, left hand on the mountain’s stone face.

Suddenly, Periwinkle found herself looking into a gap in the rock. Weaver was there, pushing himself slowly to his feet beside Harlow, who was panting heavily.

Periwinkle gave a gasp of relief. “There you are!”

“Yes.” Weaver grimaced. “But wherearewe?”

Periwinkle shook her head. She had no idea; she’d never been up on this mountain, and she couldn’t make out anything down on the ground below their path.

But suddenly, through the heavily falling snow, Periwinkle spotted something glittering above the horizon. She stared hard, holding her breath.

And there, from the gap in the mountainside, she saw a gap in the clouds. Through it was the second star, twinkling over the Never Sea.

“Weaver!” Periwinkle whirled around.

“I know,” he said. But he wasn’t staring toward the sea or the sky. He was looking inward, farther into the gap, toward the heart of the mountain. She moved to his side, staring in disbelief at what he’d found, and gave a gasp of wonder.

Not a window to the workshop, she saw. Not a door.

It was a web. A golden web, as delicate as starlight and glittering with icicles like tiny diamonds, was strung between the icy rock walls. From top to bottom it was half again as tall as Weaver, and its smallest opening was the size of a fairy’s hand.

Periwinkle had seen the web before, of course. But she’d never been close enough to appreciate how beautiful itfelt. Not enough to sense the light and the joy and the craft pouring off it, there in the gap in the rock.

This, she knew, was the end of the thread.

When Periwinkle laid a hand on the web, it stretched, fibers shifting and sliding to create an opening large enough for them to step through. Weaver and Periwinkle exchanged glances.