Page 96 of Wings of Reverie

And then Weaver went to work.

“Two to one, flax to dream-thread—the ratio of the web thread to dream-thread is much steeper, but the web’s its own kind of dream magic,” he muttered. Taking the sapphire spindle from his pocket, he popped the golden whorl off with his thumb. “I don’t have a shuttle, but this will do.”

Periwinkle watched him, his skillful hands, the curls moving at the nape of his neck as he unwound the skein of dream-thread. But suddenly, he stopped.

“What?” she asked. Weaver bit his lip, looking hesitant.

“I’ve been handling your dreams and your nightmares with gloves all this time,” he said, lowering his eyes from hers. “And it’s so strange. Because I was creating this barrier between me and whatever was inside your head, while still taking something so personal. Something that was never mine to take.”

Periwinkle put a hand on his cheek. “I’ve forgiven you for that,” she reminded him. “And you’re not taking anything from me now. I’m giving these dreams to you freely. To save the people we love.”

“I know.” His voice was quiet and ashamed. “But I don’t have my gloves anymore. I can’t even give you a semblance of privacy now.”

Periwinkle frowned. “You couldn’t see my dreams before?”

“I could sort of sense them—catch glimpses,” he said. “But I never saw them properly until the night I took my gloves off and went into your nightmare.” Periwinkle nodded, taking this in.

Weaver was giving her all the power here. She already knew what she wanted to do with it.

“So look at them properly,” she said. “If you want to.”

“I do. I want to see them.” He paused, looking into her face. “I want to seeyou.”

“Okay,” she said quietly. “We’ll do it together.”

Weaver unwound the dream-thread a little way and knotted it around the end of the spindle, then began nimbly to shuttle it through the gaps in the web. “I don’t have a comb,” he said. “I need you to tamp down the weft by hand.”

“Will the dreams disappear if I touch them?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Not once they’re woven into the web.”

Periwinkle nodded and moved toward the loom, using her fingertips to bunch all the dream-thread closer to its edge.

And then she saw them.

She wasn’t inside her dreams. But she could see them, hear them. Feel them. With the fibers of each dream blended and spun into thread, woven into the dream-magic web, the story and sense of them all ran together like the shifting colors of a sunset.

When she looked up at Weaver, she knew by the soft set of his mouth that he was seeing and hearing and feeling the same things.

Once, he bit back a laugh as his knuckle brushed the shimmering thread. “What’s so funny?” Periwinkle asked.

But she already knew. She could sense the dream, just as well as he did.

“This one,” he said. “You kept asking for chamomile tea—”

“And the sparrow man in the tearoom kept pointing to rabbits and ferrets,” she groaned. “‘What about this one? How about this one?’ When I woke up, I was sure there would be a bunch of animals crowded into my house.”

“You’ve had worse dreams,” Weaver said, smiling ruefully.And it was my fault, she knew he was thinking.

“And I’ve had better ones,” she countered. “And that was because of you.”

Periwinkle and Weaver worked as the moon rose, peering in and out of the thick veil of clouds that still covered the sky. Weaver’s long-fingered hands were impossibly clever, impossibly careful ashe wove the iridescent dream-thread through the golden web, with Periwinkle inexpertly straightening up the weft and Legs ducking in and out to weave in his own contribution. Finally, Weaver stood up, rolling out his wrists, arching his back. “This part’s finished,” he said. “Help me lift it from the frame? I have to full this to get rid of the gaps in the weaving.”

“Do you need me to melt some ice?” Periwinkle asked. She’d done it several times for the fulling-talents in Floss’s workshop that week.

Weaver smiled. “No need. I’m going to try a new technique.” He took a silver bowl from one of the worktables and carried it beneath the mountainside window, and Periwinkle watched in astonishment as the bowl filled slowly with moonlight.

“‘Fulling in moonlight, rather than melted ice, has proved most efficacious to prevent fraying.’ That was in the Sapphire Mine journal,” he said. Weaver was almost glowing with happiness as he plunged the web tapestry into the bowl, scrunching and scrubbing it so the dream-thread began to expand. But suddenly he paused, clearing his throat. “It would go faster with two.”