Chapter 23
At first, nothing happened.
At first, Periwinkle thought whatever Dougal and Weaver had planned hadn’t worked.
Lord Milori leapt down from the mezzanine and landed hard on the atrium floor, his expression warily confused.
The fairies dancing and eating began to notice the thread circling the room, too, and moved toward it with curious eyes and hands.
And then shadows began to appear.
Shapes flowed out of the thread, like smoke or spilled oil or currents of dark wind. They leaked through the room, toward the winter fairies, over and across the bookshelves and into the blue ice walls.
One scream and then another split the air.
Chaos erupted as the fairies who’d been mingling around the doorway raced for the safety of Juniper Glade.
A storm of wingbeats blew up inside the hall as fairies raced in every direction, desperate to escape the murky purple-black shapes slithering through the room.
And then the nightmares truly began.
Periwinkle could not have imagined anything worse than seeing the winter fairies screaming, flying, fleeing the hall. But that was before they began to collapse, their eyes falling shut but not in ordinary sleep.
Weaver caught at her elbow. “Periwinkle,” he yelled. “We have to go.”
She shook him off, shouting over the rising cries of the fairies. “What have you done?”
Where were Lord Milori and Dewey? Where were Floss and Spangle? Where were all the baking-talents from Lattice’s and the cooking-talents from Blizz’s?
“Periwinkle, you promised!” Weaver’s face was pale. “You promised you’d go when I said—”
“And you lied!” Periwinkle said. A sick pit opened up in her stomach as she searched the crowd.
She saw Alder from Weaver’s workshop first.
“Alder.” She raced over to him, shaking him urgently. “Alder, wake up.” But the sparrow man only lay on his side, eyes remaining shut.
Close by, she spotted Flare, her glittering gold gown twisted on the floor around her legs. “Flare!” she exclaimed, hurrying to her side. “Flare, open your eyes.” But Flare only whimpered and rolled onto her stomach as a purple-gray shadow brushed her arm.
Periwinkle shrank back from the slimy-looking shadow, one of the dozens crawling through the room from fairy to fairy. But when the shadow got close to Periwinkle herself, it recoiled from her like she had from it, and she felt something like a painless burn where her bracelet lay against her skin.
And then she spotted Dewey.
The Keeper of All Fairy Knowledge was curled up on his side next to one of the banquet tables, his cane next to him on the ground. His knees were drawn up to his chest, like he was in pain, and as Periwinkle got close, he moved his hands to cover his eyes.
“Dewey,” she gasped. “What’s happened to you?” She shook his shoulder, hoping somehow he might wake up.
But the Keeper only pulled away, shaking his head, face crumpled. “—so sorry,” he groaned.
“What?” Periwinkle crouched closer, brushing the hair off his forehead.
“We have to go.” Weaver appeared at her side, Dougal behind him.
But Dewey’s voice was almost a wail now. “Oh, Selene,” he said, “I’m so sorry.” Periwinkle’s heart dropped.
Then, with no warning, Weaver scooped her up and hefted her out of the Hall of Winter and into the dark outside. Dougal slammed the door shut behind them with an echoing thud.
“There,” Dougal said grimly. His face looked eerie in the glow of the snow lanterns, the only light in the cloud-covered glade. “It’s done.”
“What’s done? What did you do?” Periwinkle wrenched away from Weaver, voice scraping against her throat. “Why did they all suddenly go to sleep?”
“Periwinkle.” Weaver’s voice was hollow.
“They wouldn’t wake up,” she said. “Alder. Flare. The Keeper. All of them just started having nightmares, and those things were everywhere—”
“Nightmares.” Dougal snorted. “Those fairies don’t know anything about nightmares—”
“What are you talking about?” she cut in. Periwinkle looked frantically from the healer to the hall doors to the glade spread out around them, her panic sharp enough to rattle her teeth.
Worst of all, she felt torn in two.
She didn’t understand what Dougal had done, or why he was so suddenly, brutally furious. Her pulse raced thinking of the fairies trapped inside the hall, inside their nightmares.
But with those nightmares so horribly close, she was reminded of her own dark dreams about the rot in the Pixie Dust Root. Of the dread she’d been feeling for days, and what she and Weaver still needed to do.
“Weaver,” she said. “What about the root? I want to help everyone here, but first we have to go heal the rot and save the tree.”
Weaver looked up at her, eyes bereft. A sharp gust of wind tugged forlornly at his hair, rushing through the juniper trees on the edge of the glade.
The longer he didn’t speak, the more sharply Periwinkle felt like she was falling and her wings weren’t going to catch her.
Dread beat a fast, heavy drum in her chest as she turned to Dougal, thinking about the last thing that Dewey had said.
“Dougal.” Her voice trembled. “Why was the Keeper talking about Selene in his nightmares?”
“He must have been feeling guilty.” The healer’s voice was dark. “As well he should.”
“What are you saying?”
Dougal scoffed, jutting a finger toward the hall’s closed doors.
“I’m saying every fairy inside is living the nightmare my life has been without Selene.
Without knowing where she is. Where she died.
” He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was thick.
“What she must have gone through, all alone up on that mountain.”
Periwinkle felt overwhelmed by sadness at the mere idea. But she still didn’t understand. She and Weaver still needed to go.
“Weaver?” she asked again. He said nothing, did nothing. Periwinkle’s wings trembled with a hazy, undefined dread.
She was going to be sick.
The Pixie Dust Root: it was what all of this had been about. It was why they had gone looking for the scissors and the spindle. It was why she had let Weaver through her door and into her dreams.
Weaver shook his head. “Periwinkle,” he said again.
Her fear was so strong she could taste it in her mouth.
He’d barely used her real name at first. Now it seemed to be all he could say.
But looking at Weaver, not moving, hanging his head—at Dougal, seething with satisfied anger—her own name in that naked, broken tone was all she needed to hear.
Suddenly, her thoughts spun together and away from her.
Selene.
The storm.
Snow Globe Mountain.
The nightmares.
She thought of the way Dougal had wrapped the hall in nightmare thread, just like she and Weaver had done to the Pixie Dust Root in last night’s dream.
And finally, Periwinkle understood.
Her wings seemed to stop working for a moment. She landed hard, feeling heavy with horror.
“My nightmares,” she whispered. “In all my bad dreams, there’s a huge storm, and the rot’s destroyed the Pixie Dust Root. The tree is dying and the wind is tearing at it, ripping up roots, ripping off limbs, and it’s—”
“It’s what happened to Selene. The storm. Her death,” Weaver said quietly. “All of this, from the very beginning—it’s all always been for Selene.”