Chapter 11
The lampposts were lit in Snowlight Square, and Weaver was still working.
Periwinkle glanced over at him past Spangle, who was nearly done stitching the last ivy vine over the bodice of Anise’s red-feathered gown.
Spangle and her friend Trim, another sewing fairy, had been peppering Periwinkle with questions for the last hour.
“I still can’t believe you’re here instead of on the Mainland,” Spangle said, twisting a curl back into one of her hair buns. “Are you loving the Frost Festival? Are you coming to the snowball fight tonight?”
“It’s not for the faint of heart,” said Trim, lowering her gingery eyebrows in mock seriousness.
Trim was a tiny, pale redhead with a passion for jewel-toned clothes and gossip.
“The snowball fight’s a matter of honor.
We start working on technique as soon as the others leave for the Mainland and build forts in strategic locations.
There are long-standing rivalries. Betrayals cut deep.
” She made a face at Periwinkle and they both giggled.
“And the Book Flood was so much fun!” Spangle clapped her hands—a risky move, Periwinkle thought, considering Spangle was now holding razor-sharp scissors and a needle. “Who did you give books to? Did you go to the reading party in Snowlight Square or the one in Evergreen Overlook?”
“Oh. I stayed home,” Periwinkle said. “And I only gave a book to Weaver.”
Trim gasped. “But Weaver never talks to anyone! And when he does, he’s totally hostile, no matter how much we try to be nice to him.” She slumped, looking sulky, then paused. “Are you two…together?”
“What?” Periwinkle hadn’t meant to blurt the word out so loudly. “I mean, no. No, of course not. Weaver is rude, and irritating.”
Spangle frowned. “I thought you were friends.”
“We are! We are friends. We’re just—” Periwinkle broke off at their confused stares. “It’s not like that,” she finished clumsily.
Trim bit her lip, then gave Periwinkle an embarrassed smile. “Well, as long as you’re not going out with him, could you put in a good word for me?”
Periwinkle hesitated, turning to look at Weaver.
He was leaning over his workbench, one pencil behind his ear and another in his hand as he marked a pattern onto the back of a eucalyptus leaf.
The lightcatcher overhead illuminated his cheekbones, the careful motion of his hands, the movement of his lips as he counted quietly to himself.
“Um,” Periwinkle said, not looking away from him. Trim and Spangle followed her glance, and Weaver met their stares as he began to pack up his station.
When he gave Trim and Spangle a look so disdainful that Periwinkle physically flinched, all three of them looked away.
“Sure.” Periwinkle cleared her throat and tried to give Trim a bright smile. “I’ll do my best.”
But as Spangle finally snipped the ivy vine and freed Periwinkle from the dress, Periwinkle wasn’t sure if she was itchy from feather fluff clinging to her skin or from the favor Trim had asked.
“Good luck at the snowball fight tonight,” she said, moving toward the door. “Have fun!”
“Thanks.” Spangle wrapped a mallard-feather scarf around her neck, glancing doubtfully at Weaver waiting by the exit with his hands in his pockets. “But I think you need it more than we do.”
Periwinkle and Weaver were quiet as they made their way toward her home, but she could hear the sounds of the snowball fight already beginning down in the moonlit Frost Forest.
“You worked late tonight,” Periwinkle began. “Were you hoping I’d give up on waiting for you and just go home?”
Weaver gave her an ironic glance. “I assume your new friends thought that’s what you should do.”
“Hardly,” Periwinkle mumbled. “Trim and Spangle barely did more than look at you, and you bit their heads off.”
“I didn’t say anything!” he protested.
“You sure didn’t,” she said. “You didn’t speak to anyone all day. Except for when you talked to Spangle while I was helping her, and I think she almost fainted to find out you have an actual voice.”
“And you were watching me?” The corner of his mouth kicked up. “All day?”
Periwinkle glared at him, but she felt herself flush again. “Of course not,” she said. “But Trim asked if I could set the two of you up.”
“She asked what?” Weaver stopped short in the air, gaping. “What did you say?”
His face was a mask of horror, brows furrowed, black eyes wide. Periwinkle gave a hopeless laugh, trying to ignore the weird twinge in her chest. “She’s got a crush on you. I…told her I’d put in a good word.”
Weaver frowned, then set off flying again, avoiding Periwinkle’s eyes. “I don’t think so. The people at work—I don’t really talk to them. And I wouldn’t want to get involved with one of them.” He rubbed his temples, gritting his teeth like he was annoyed.
Periwinkle flew on, refusing to feel relieved.
“You know, they’re not as nice as they pretend to be,” Weaver suddenly said.
She frowned. “Hmm?”
Weaver ran a hand through his hair, looking uncomfortable. “The other fairies in the workshop, I mean.” He said it quickly, like he wanted to get it all out at once. Periwinkle tried to read his face, but the path to the Frost Forest was dark, and he wouldn’t look at her.
“But everyone was so kind,” Periwinkle said. “The sewing fairies told me you shut them all down when they try to talk to you.”
“I’m sure they think they’re nice,” he said. “But they’re not.”
“What does that mean?” she asked. “How can someone think they’re nice, and not be?”
“The same way you can smile and pretend to be happy even when you’re not,” Weaver retorted. “The way you give people exactly the version of Periwinkle they want, and all you have to do is lie without ever saying a word.”
Periwinkle gawked at him. “Oh, so you’re telling the truth by being a grouch to everyone?” she asked. “Do you really think you’re being more sincere than the rest of us because you make your bad attitude everyone else’s problem?”
“No. But I think friends are honest with each other. And while you’re lying about how you feel, you’re also lying to everyone by letting them believe they’re your friends. By fake-smiling and pretending to be the keeper of all silver linings.”
“I’m not pretending!” Periwinkle snapped. Again, Weaver drew up short, and so did she.
“You forget I’ve been alone with you in the dark,” he said, edging closer to her, eyes narrowed, expression unbending. “And I know you’re faking all this”—Weaver gestured up and down at her—“for everyone else. You’ve been in pain. You’ve been afraid.”
“And I’ve been alone with you, and you are not nearly as miserable a person as you’d prefer everyone else to think,” she said, seething.
“Yes, I’ve been worried. But no, I’m not going to let one fear or feeling define me.
We don’t have any control over our dreams or our impulses or our feelings; they’re just things happening inside our heads, and they don’t make us what we are—”
“The dark’s the only place people are honest!” Weaver interrupted. “We’re fairies who dream, we know better than anyone that what’s inside our head defines—”
But Periwinkle kept talking. “No. They don’t. Our choices do. And you’re choosing to shut out people who have shown you kindness.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It could be,” she said forcefully. “You think the dark shows who people are. But the inside of someone’s head is only half the picture.
That’s just what they want, or what they’re afraid of.
It’s not the final say on who they are. Or who they could be.
” Periwinkle looked away, unsettled. When she looked back at Weaver, his eyes were as intent on her as if he’d never seen her before.
For a moment, Periwinkle struggled to catch her breath.
“Maybe you’re right,” she finally said. “Maybe everyone’s only pretending to care about anyone else.
Maybe in the dark, in secret, inside their own heads, everyone’s selfish and unkind.
But I believe that goodness is real, and all of us can choose it if we want.
But none of us can go through this world without it touching us, any more than we can avoid the dark. ”
“And we can’t avoid the dark,” he said.
“I know, Weaver.” The dark—inside her head, out in the world—it was unavoidable. Periwinkle wasn’t naive.
But even in the worst of her nightmares, there was always that hand reaching out for hers. That spark of—something. Too firmly planted for even the harshest wind to move. Too bright for even the darkest night to smother.
With their conversation repeating itself in her head, Periwinkle wasn’t really thinking about what she was doing as she drifted over to a nearby oak tree.
She didn’t even think to stop herself before she scraped a handful of snow off a branch, shaped it into a snowball, and threw it at Weaver’s back, smacking him right between his wings.
Weaver stopped dead in the air. When he turned to face her, his expression said Periwinkle might as well have grown a second head and pitched that at him.
“What was that?” he spluttered.
“A snowball,” she said helpfully. “I feel like you’ve probably encountered them bef—oof!”
It had happened in a jingle. Quick as quick, Weaver had rushed to a nearby rock pile, made a snowball of his own, and lobbed it at her face.
“You!” she bleated, spitting snow out of her mouth. And then they were off.
It wasn’t quite the snowball fight the rest of the fairies were holding for the Frost Festival; it was just the two of them. No teams, no forts, no strategies. They dashed around trees, hid behind leaves, caught each other and then tore away on the wind.
Periwinkle wasn’t sure who broke first. But tension had been building between them all afternoon, in the workshop and after they’d left.
It eased, just a little, when Periwinkle surprised Weaver with a snowball to the side of the face and he burst into gasping laughter, stopping to catch his breath with his hands on his knees.
Periwinkle watched his smile, small but unguarded, and didn’t say a word.