Chapter 26
Periwinkle tore through the air, her thoughts as stormy as the night around her. Snow blew in her eyes, yanked at her skirts. When hot tears blurred her vision, she dried her eyes with the enormous sleeves of her dress.
She wasn’t completely sure where she was heading. But she had the vague idea that the answers she needed now lay near Spring, where all of this had started.
She’d been straining her eyes like this the evening she’d found the dream, she remembered. She had been standing on the border of Winter, looking across at the flowers she would never be able to touch, at the bright sunshine she would never feel on her skin.
Periwinkle had gone looking for springtime. It had felt like a promise from Pixie Hollow itself that she’d found another kind of magic entirely.
Which was why her hurt ran deeper than Weaver’s actions alone could account for.
Since Periwinkle had arrived, she had felt a connection to the things she found. They meant something about the world. They meant something about who she was.
And if her finding the dream magic was nothing but an accident, then that changed the color of everything around her.
Fundamentally, it meant that she’d had it all wrong. She’d found something, sure. But it hadn’t been looking for her.
Coincidence, not fate. Accident, not destiny.
She knew now that the Pixie Dust Tree was safe. But could magic be trusted? Could Periwinkle trust her own judgment? She wasn’t so sure anymore.
Her only hope was getting to the border. If she could get there, if she could call Queen Clarion—
Periwinkle’s eyes were still on the river flowing between Winter and Spring when she slowed to a stop in the air over the Frost Forest.
Queen Clarion couldn’t come. She couldn’t cross into Winter, and neither could the rest of the warm season fairies. Everyone knew this—Periwinkle better than most. No one else could solve this problem for her.
She was completely alone.
Periwinkle sank into the snow and sobbed on her knees.
She had felt safe her whole life in the Winter Woods. She’d believed that magic was real, that it protected everything, that it ran beautiful, true, and deep.
She had believed that the dream magic had brought her Weaver. But that had been a lie.
Weaver had spun her a story, and she’d believed him like a fool. There had been nothing magical about it. It was what had made her think of Fletcher.
Periwinkle hadn’t just mentioned him to frustrate Weaver, though she wasn’t sorry if she had. She’d been thinking of what Spike had said the day before she left. Inevitable, she’d called them.
Because if the dream magic hadn’t brought her and Weaver together, was what she felt for Fletcher the best the magic she’d always believed in could do for destiny, for love, for inevitable? Was that magic more beautiful on the outside than it was on the inside?
In her short life, had she seen all the magic there was to see?
Periwinkle searched her memory, her thoughts, her dreams. Behind her shut eyes, she saw again the nightmare of the Pixie Dust Tree, as shattered as her heart.
But then she remembered the web. The needle, and the thread.
She’d wondered before, but now she knew: Weaver hadn’t sent her those.
He wasn’t the light that had always stayed with her in the dark.
He’d brought the dark, tailored her nightmares to a perfect fit.
They hadn’t come from the obvious jumbles of her daily thoughts, either, because Periwinkle had dreamed of the golden needle before she’d ever seen it in the mine, and she’d still never seen anything like the web or the thread in her waking life.
Through her tears and behind her closed eyes, Periwinkle saw the needle flying alongside her, the thread clinging to her hand. She saw the web stretching itself to catch her friends before they fell.
Those pieces of her dreams—the lights—hadn’t come from Weaver. And they hadn’t come from her, either.
She knew, in a deep and certain place inside her, that the lights had come from someplace else.
They had been the dream magic at work. And the magic that had guided and watched over her so relentlessly was not false, or dark, or hollow.
It was real, solid, and good. Relentlessly, fiercely, beautifully good.
Weaver might have lied to her. But Pixie Hollow? The magic?
They had always run true.
Periwinkle opened her eyes, dragging the backs of her hands over her cheeks, and for just a moment, the wind gentled.
The snow fell cool and soothing against her skin, and a deep breath brought her the scent of the river close by and the junipers back in the glade.
It was the smell of the junipers that reminded her.
Back in the Hall of Winter, the fairies were still trapped inside their nightmares. She had to get them out. But how? She stared at her hands in her lap, exhausted and out of ideas.
And then Periwinkle’s eye caught on the shimmer of the bracelet still tied around her wrist.
She’d thought it was just a pretty gift from Weaver, at first, and that its color was more of his clever work—not actual dream magic.
But Dougal had worn one, too. Remembering how the nightmare magic had flinched away from her in the hall, Periwinkle was certain: the bracelet had been made with real dream-thread.
Because somehow, something had made Weaver suspect that dreams could protect them from nightmares.
The scissors had failed them tonight because the magic tools couldn’t destroy nightmares. But dreams—Periwinkle began to wonder if dreams might be able to.
Exploring the dream-magic workshops, looking for the magic tools, she and Weaver had seen the work the dream-talents had left behind. She couldn’t remember anything in the Bobbin Wood or the Sapphire Mine workshops that would help destroy the nightmare magic in the Hall of Winter.
But there was still the Snow Globe Mountain workshop.
Dewey’s notes hadn’t told them much about it. But Periwinkle knew what the storybook had told them.
Stella had been more than bright; she’d been extraordinary. Up in her mountain workshop with her magic loom, she’d woven dreams into things no one had thought possible. Maybe Stella had left something behind that would help.
Periwinkle raised her eyes to the horizon and swallowed hard.
The storm devouring the world around her might not be a warning from her dreams, but it was still strong, and the winds on Snow Globe Mountain were already known to be dangerous. If Selene herself hadn’t made it home alive from flying there, what chance did Periwinkle have?
Periwinkle sniffled, then stopped, listening hard. Somewhere in Juniper Glade, the wolf and fox pups were barking in their kennels. After a moment, she got to her feet.
Periwinkle had a choice: to let her dreams win, or her nightmares. To trust the truth of the web and needle and thread, or let the lie of the rot fill her heart.
She could choose to believe in the dream magic, or her own terrible doubts.
She didn’t understand where her dreams had been leading her. But they had never let her down. So Periwinkle did as she always did.
Periwinkle chose magic.