Chapter 8
“Absolutely not,” Weaver said. “No. We agreed we couldn’t talk to the Keeper. You’ll give the whole thing away.”
“I know,” Periwinkle said. “Just—listen. We’ve searched every map we could find for the dream-magic workshops. You and I both already looked into dreams themselves on our own and didn’t find anything. But it’s okay. I have an idea.”
“Is it going to top your last amazing idea?” he asked flatly. “You know, the one where I had to pull you out of a river?”
“Hush. I thought of an angle I can try, and I think I can be—you know.” She paused. “Subtle about it.”
“Sure,” Weaver muttered. “I’ll believe that when it snows in Summe—Periwinkle.”
He ground out her name like he was chewing a mouthful of rocks.
Because Periwinkle had done it again. Before he could finish getting the words out, she’d taken off down the hall, fluttering through salons and studios and back down to the first floor, where the stacks were still crowded with fairies picking out books.
“This one’s about the Mainland winter holidays. What do you think?” she heard one sparrow man ask a friend.
“Grab something on windology. Or get Beauty and the Bees, she keeps talking about it,” his friend said. Then he held up a book with a tree house blueprint on the cover. “What do you think?”
“If you give him that one, he’s going to beat everyone in the snow lantern competition,” the first one teased. “So that one’s a no.”
As Weaver finally caught up with Periwinkle on her way to the Keeper’s study, still grumbling his annoyance, she wanted to ask him which he thought were louder—the winter fairies, or the books themselves.
All around them, mystery stories whispered spoilers, cookbooks called out ingredients lists, and zoology books quizzed readers on the different languages of dragons.
She loved the Hall of Winter. She wished Weaver understood.
“This is a bad idea,” he hissed at her.
“Don’t worry,” she insisted. “It’ll work.”
Weaver rolled his eyes. But Periwinkle just flew on into the study she knew so well. “Dewey,” she called. “We need a little help.”
Dewey looked up from his book and smiled.
The Keeper of All Fairy Knowledge had thin white hair and glasses, and pale skin wrinkled with his long years. His cane was propped against a teetering stack of books on dustology and wingology, just one stack of hundreds arranged in a way only he understood.
“‘We’?” he asked, brandishing his quill pen. “Howdy-do, Periwinkle.”
Periwinkle glanced around, confused. When she realized Weaver hadn’t followed her, she shook herself, like she’d just misspoken.
“Hi, Dewey. Sorry, I meant ‘I.’ I’m in need of a little help.
” She gestured back at the doorway, at the larger hall behind it.
“It’s my first Book Flood, and I need some advice. ”
“Your first Book Flood!” The Keeper’s face broke into a smile. “I’d forgotten. I heard what happened,” he added. “But why do you need my help? You know the hall as well as anyone.”
“I know. But since it’s my first Book Flood, I was hoping to give my friend something special.” She furrowed her brow. “Is there a section here in the hall for books that are a little more…unusual? Books that are extra old, or brand-new, or sort of—out of the ordinary?”
She couldn’t specify exactly what she was hoping to find. But Periwinkle had a hunch.
“Oh, now that’s an interesting idea,” Dewey said.
“Yes, I’ve got a private section here in the hall.
It’s for books that are real old, or sort of rare, or a little sensitive,” he said.
“Now, I’ve got a few scholars—you know, dust-talent fairies and tinker-talents and healing-talents and the like—who I don’t mind taking a look.
But I trust you, and whoever you trust.” He winked at Periwinkle. “Follow me.
“Yumpin’ Yetis, it’s crowded today,” the Keeper called over his shoulder, leading her through the shelves.
“Busier every Book Flood. It’s just over here.
” Periwinkle stayed close as he led them past a section of books organized entirely by color, and another snoring like hibernating winter animals.
Eventually, he came to one screened off by a sturdy wall of ice, in an empty corner of the hall Periwinkle had never explored before.
“Take a look here, and see what you find,” he said, unlocking a door in the panel.
“I’ve got books no one can translate, and some translations I haven’t finished, a few books on scout training and dangerous creatures, a few books of old legends.
One book has pages of ice with no words on it.
Oh, and one is just a little pouch of paper crumbles. It’s so old it fell right apart!”
“Jingles,” Periwinkle said.
“Oh, just you wait.” With a chuckle, Dewey ushered them inside the private section. Periwinkle gasped.
She’d been expecting the Keeper to show her a charming little nook, a few dozen books at most. But when she followed him inside, Periwinkle found the shelves were so tall and wide she could hardly see the end of them.
“Almost all of these will be out in the general collection someday,” Dewey said wistfully. “But, you know. It takes longer than you’d think to finish a book.”
“I’ll bet,” Periwinkle said.
There would be something here, she was certain. The question was if she would ever find it.
Her face must have looked worried, because Dewey crossed to her side then and patted her on the arm.
“I’m glad you get to see the Frost Festival, but it may be strange to be away from your friends.
I know you’re not used to being alone,” he said kindly.
“So you let me know if you find yourself at a loose end.”
You have no idea, Periwinkle wanted to tell him. The words very nearly slipped out of her mouth.
But then she glimpsed a title that stopped her heart.
Boot-Warming: A Lost Talent.
Trying not to let her hands shake, Periwinkle picked up the book. “Dewey,” she said, “what is this?”
The old sparrow man squinted at the title. “Oh!” he said brightly. “Boot-warming’s a lost talent. I’ve been building up the field of study.”
“A lost talent?” Periwinkle asked, hoping she sounded interested, but only, like, a normal amount of interested. The Keeper nodded.
“Oh yes. Just a few talents we’ve stopped manifesting. But that one was shelved in the wrong place. It goes”—he fluttered a little way down the shelves and crouched on creaking knees to point—“here. With the rest of the books on lost talents.”
“Right,” Periwinkle said. “Right. Got it.”
The rest of the books on lost talents. She gripped the book to her chest, wanting to crouch down beside the Keeper and start pawing through the shelf immediately. She hoped he couldn’t hear her heart thundering.
But when Dewey straightened, he turned a cheerful smile on her, like a world of knowledge hadn’t just—maybe—opened up to her.
“Anyway, find a book for your friend. Try to enjoy your winter season at home.” The Keeper beamed.
“I’m going to learn to crochet! Going to make Fiona one of them little sweater-vest things. ”
Fiona was Dewey’s gigantic pet lynx. She had teeth as long as Periwinkle’s arms. Periwinkle tried to picture her in a crocheted sweater-vest and failed. “Amazing,” she said faintly.
“I think so,” he said. “Anyhoo. The door will lock itself behind you. Good luck!” The Keeper gave her a jolly wave goodbye, and Periwinkle did the same as he headed out and back toward his study.
She forced herself to stay upright as he left, pretending she was interested in Dustology: A Rainbow of Possibilities.
The door had almost fallen shut behind him when a hand caught it.
“So,” Weaver said, letting himself inside. “I hadn’t realized you and the Keeper were best friends.”
Periwinkle had already hit the floor. “I told you we knew one another really well,” she pointed out, not looking up as she rummaged through the bottom shelf. “Why does that surprise you?”
“He’s not exactly your usual crowd.”
Periwinkle thought about asking who he assumed her usual crowd was. “You’d better be grateful he’s my friend. I didn’t even know this place existed,” she said instead, still squinting at the shelf. “You hear what he said about lost talents?”
Weaver nodded. “I sure did,” he said grimly. “Show me.”
Periwinkle stared at the books, reading the spines with her heart in her throat.
It took so many fairies with so many skills to make Pixie Hollow what it was.
There were frost-talents like Periwinkle and Gliss and Spike, animal-talents like Sled, glacier-talents like Slush.
Fletcher was an icicle-talent, who sometimes worked with light-talents to make lightcatchers.
Mining-talents worked in Pixie Hollow’s mines; healing-talents healed fairies of illnesses like fairy distemper and fairy flu; fast-flying-talents created the icy wind that blew through the Winter Woods and the Mainland, and occasionally delivered important messages.
What had kept those talents in Pixie Hollow?
And how had others been lost?
There were only a few books on lost talents—some to do with the human winter holidays, others to do with finding lost children in bad weather, or helping the humans during the cold months.
Periwinkle slid the volume on boot-warming-talents in next to the ones on soup-heating-talents and mitten-finding-talents and scarf-winding-talents.
And then—there it was. Dream Magic: A Lost Talent.
Periwinkle felt like she’d grown wings in her stomach.
She reached for it immediately. But she stopped when she saw Weaver’s hand reaching for it, too, a strange look on his face.
“You do it,” Periwinkle said, tipping her head toward the shelf. Weaver nodded without speaking and gingerly lifted the book from its spot.
Dream Magic was thin, apparently only a few dozen pages long, and bound like many of the other books in a blue-green eucalyptus-leaf cover sparkling with frost. Despite his shuttered expression, Weaver’s long, graceful hands were more careful than Periwinkle would’ve expected as he opened the book and began to turn its pages, one leaf after another.
Legs, who’d been hiding in Weaver’s waistcoat pocket since they’d come back downstairs, crawled into view again now, lingering just above Weaver’s heart as he read.
“It doesn’t seem to say much about what dream-talents can actually do,” he finally said.
“Most of the book is empty. But it lists some dream-talents—fairies named Stella, Morpheus, Orion, some others. Apparently, they were famous for their work. And there are records of books and journals that apparently existed at some point. And—oh.”
“What is it?” Periwinkle asked.
“This,” he said. “Look here.”
She was wary of getting too close, given how he’d whined about sharing the chair earlier. But Periwinkle scooted a little nearer to read over Weaver’s shoulder.
There, in Dewey’s handwriting—Periwinkle recognized it, elegant and old-fashioned as it always was from his feathered quill pen—was a list of dream-talent fairy tools, and the workshops that had held them. Periwinkle caught her breath.
“I know,” Weaver said. There was a lightness—an excitement?—in his voice she hadn’t expected. “There are so many tools.”
Anticipation hardened some people, she knew. But Weaver, it seemed to have softened.
Periwinkle leaned closer to the page. “Remind me what we’re looking for? A spinning wheel? I’ve heard of those.”
“Yes. Fiber’s turned into thread with a spinning wheel, or a spindle, both of which—”
“Which they had,” she said avidly. Then she frowned, pointing at one of the lines on the list. “But the Keeper seemed to think the spinning wheel was broken.” Weaver grimaced. Then he shook himself.
“It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll go find the spindle and use that. And we should get the scissors, too—we’ll definitely need those.”
“Agreed.” Periwinkle paused. She nodded at another line. “Did the legend say we need any of these other things, like the needle? And what are the other things—carders, a thimble, a loom?”
“Carders smooth out thick, lumpy material before you spin it, but dream fiber isn’t that thick.
Looms are for turning thread into fabric.
Thimbles keep you from stabbing yourself as you sew, so we don’t need those, and we don’t need the needle if all we’re doing is wrapping thread around the Pixie Dust Root,” he said, still scanning the page.
“My biggest worry right now is that we don’t know where these places are.
The Bobbin Wood. The Sapphire Mine. None of them except… ” Weaver swallowed.
Except for Snow Globe Mountain, he didn’t say. The loom was in a workshop on Snow Globe Mountain. Periwinkle was glad their task wouldn’t require a visit.
“Also,” Weaver added, “these directions to the workshops hardly tell us anything. Half of them make no sense. Count the sheep. Chase the dreams. Why do they sound the same? Why are they written like riddles?”
Periwinkle grimaced. The directions were practically in code, but it was hard to say whether they were from Dewey, or if they were some joke or oversight of the dream-talents’.
Even the notes that were a bit clearer weren’t much to go on.
Periwinkle knew the Winter Woods like the back of her hand, from Snowlight Square to Chilly Falls, but what kind of help was it supposed to be that the Sapphire Mine, where the spindle was kept, was “in the northeast”?
She’d never even heard of the Bobbin Wood, where the scissors supposedly belonged.
There were three forests in the Winter Woods—the strip of oaks that was Mistletoe Terrace, Evergreen Overlook north of Snow Globe Mountain, and the Frost Forest. Was there a whole fourth forest hiding somewhere she’d never seen or heard of?
But she didn’t give voice to any of this. “We’ll find them,” she said confidently. “We’ll start with the scissors first.”
“Sounds good,” Weaver said, and for a moment, Periwinkle thought he might smile. Suddenly, though, he winced, pressing a hand to his forehead.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Weaver handed her the book, and Periwinkle slid it into her bag.
As she did, though, another book caught her eye. She grabbed it, too, when Weaver wasn’t looking. He muttered something about needing to be somewhere, all the brightness gone out of his expression.
As she followed him to the door, Periwinkle was surprised to find she missed it.