Chapter 10
Periwinkle woke alone again.
She still hadn’t asked Weaver to stay, or anything. But Periwinkle had wondered if they might go looking for the scissors today, and she was frustrated to find him gone before she could even bring up the idea. Then she remembered she had to go to Floss’s, and she felt even more annoyed.
Worse than her irritation, as Periwinkle woke up by herself, and got ready by herself, and flew by herself over a crowd of fairies taking turns sledding down into the Frost Forest, it was hard to ignore her own loneliness.
What were Spike and Gliss doing just then?
Had they gone far to the north, where the leaves and temperatures would’ve been quick to drop?
Or were they somewhere farther south, where autumn’s colors and golden warmth had stuck around just a little while longer?
Periwinkle felt a bit lost when she stepped inside the workshop in Snowlight Square. But when Floss popped up in front of her, smiling, she came back to herself with a start. The answering smile she gave the sewing-talent was almost—almost—real.
“Good morning, Periwinkle,” Floss said brightly. Her long white curls were held back with an ivy vine, and though the sun was barely up, Periwinkle thought she was flittering around even more quickly than usual. “I’m glad you’re here!”
“Me too,” Periwinkle told her friend. “I can’t believe I’ve never come to your workshop before! This place is amazing.”
The walls, floor, and workbenches in Floss’s craft-talent workshop were sweet-smelling cedar, and suncatchers hung low on its first level for the fairies sewing busily against dress forms or embroidery hoops.
Bolts of material and bundles of eucalyptus leaves and pine needles were piled against the walls, and crystals and feathers and trim in a hundred colors covered everything else that wasn’t moving.
Up on the second floor, beneath more suncatchers, other fairies twisted wads of colorful fiber into thread with spinning wheels and what Periwinkle guessed might be spindles, while others wound lengths of thread around and around bits of—something.
“Here in the front are our sewists and spinners,” Floss explained.
“The spinners work with drop spindles and spinning wheels and wind their thread onto bobbins. Over there, at the back of this main level, they’re fulling material—that’s how you shape its fibers—and making dye.
” She gestured at a long sink on the workshop’s far wall, where some fairies were pounding woven flax or pine needles or cotton in melted ice, and others were crushing and blending fruits, leaves, and barks with mortars and pestles.
The last few craft-talents stood at a row of big wooden frames. Periwinkle drew up short.
“Over here,” Floss continued, “we’ve got looms for turning thread into cloth. Looms are worked by—”
“Weaver,” Periwinkle said confusedly.
“Yes,” Floss said, also somewhat confusedly. “Yes, the weavers work on the looms.”
“Right,” Periwinkle said. But she didn’t mean weavers, plural, general. Just one specific Weaver.
Jingles.
Weaver hadn’t noticed her yet. But there he was, dark hair a mess and eyes bright as he wove thread side to side through the up-and-down strands on the loom, then pushed down what he’d done with a long wooden comb.
His hands moved confidently back and forth, building up the material at the bottom of his loom with every pass he made.
Periwinkle didn’t know if he’d felt her staring, or if he’d just noticed other fairies abandoning their work to watch her. But Weaver met Periwinkle’s eyes just as Floss realized who she was watching.
“Oh, you didn’t mean—you meant him. Weaver.” Floss paused, looking surprised. “Wait, do you know Weaver?”
Weaver looked back at Periwinkle, raising his eyebrows in what almost looked like a challenge. Well, he seemed to ask. Do you?
“Yes,” Periwinkle said. “We’re friends.” She might have been annoyed at him, but Periwinkle had spent the last two days with Weaver, and she wasn’t about to pretend to a room full of fairies that she didn’t know him.
Even if he had ditched her without saying goodbye. Again.
Still, Weaver’s eyes narrowed in surprise at her answer. Only a hint of a smirk showed that he was at least a little pleased by it, too. But as Floss and the other craft-talents glanced between the two of them, Weaver’s face went blank again, and he turned his back on the room.
“Well, that’s great. I’m sure we can all agree we’re glad to have your help,” Floss said diplomatically. “So, first task. Can you help me organize these orders?”
“Sounds flitterific,” Periwinkle said. “Let’s do it.”
Periwinkle wasn’t incredibly organized, herself.
But a group of sewing-talents eagerly made room for her at their workbench, so she took the heap of papers and clothes Floss handed her and began to sort it out—this pile of clothes in need of mending, this pile of clothes in need of retrimming, that stack of papers for new orders of gowns or cloaks or gloves.
With Floss’s help, Periwinkle handed out clothes to be refurbished or repaired, as well as dozens of orders for new things.
Periwinkle had known most of the other fairies in the workshop by sight—if not by name—when she arrived.
But she’d meant what she’d said to Weaver the night before, and soon, there were no strangers there left to her.
The craft-talents included Periwinkle happily in their conversations as they all worked, chatted with her as she flew back and forth to get things for them, eagerly showed off their newest project or favorite old technique while she sorted hailstone buttons and crystal trim.
But Weaver ignored everyone. Fairies who squeezed past him in the crowded workshop bent themselves into impossible shapes trying not to bump into him at his loom.
When a fulling-talent needed to move a bucket of melted ice over to her sink, she circled halfway around the first floor to avoid having to carry the thing past him.
He was so focused on his work that a sewing fairy who asked to borrow a pattern from him had to tap him on the shoulder three times just to get his attention.
“Here,” he said briefly, though not unkindly, passing her the eucalyptus-leaf pattern before turning right back to his loom.
And when a spinning-talent upstairs dropped a bobbin from the second level onto his head, he didn’t even stop weaving.
Periwinkle wasn’t actually sure he’d noticed.
It explained why Floss had been genuinely surprised at Periwinkle’s saying they were friends. It was because Weaver avoided absolutely everyone else.
Yet all along, as Periwinkle sifted through papers or passed out dresses or peered over the shoulders of the fullers and dyers and sewists, she could sense Weaver watching her. Aware of her, like everyone else in the room was, except he was pretending not to notice her at all.
So she let him avoid her. Periwinkle concentrated on carrying baskets of yarn for the spinning fairies, or organizing boxes of thread by color for the sewists. She spent half the afternoon being a mannequin for Spangle, a sewing fairy who needed a model.
“The skirt just doesn’t drape the same with a dress form,” she said through a mouthful of pins.
Periwinkle fervently hoped she wouldn’t swallow one.
Spangle, dark-skinned with two fluffy black topknots and large ice-lens glasses covering half her face, did not seem nearly worried enough about this possibility.
“Oh, no,” Spangle suddenly wailed, and Periwinkle jumped. How many pins had Spangle had in her mouth? She couldn’t remember. “I ran out of cardinal feathers!”
Periwinkle looked down, relieved but confused. She thought there were plenty of feathers on her body—probably enough for two or three of her, in fact. But the sewist cocked a suspicious eyebrow, dark eyes narrowing behind her huge glasses. “Periwinkle, are you taller than Anise?” she demanded.
“Who’s Anise?” Periwinkle asked.
“Yes. I think you’re taller than she is. That’s why I ran out of feathers. I made the skirt too long.” The sewing-talent jumped up, pushing her glasses up her nose. “I have to go check the upstairs closet. Alder, will you double-check Periwinkle’s measurements?”
“Sure.” Alder, a freckled and brown-haired sewing-talent, brightened. “Hi, Periwinkle. I’m—”
“It’s fine, Alder. I’ve got it.”
Periwinkle turned. Half the workshop turned.
Alder wrinkled his forehead, looking ready to argue. But Weaver was already at Periwinkle’s side, sliding the measuring tape from around the collar of his waistcoat.
Alder went quiet, and he and everyone else went back to their work.
“Surprised to see you here, Sparkles,” Weaver said under his breath. “You look like a cupcake.”
“Excuse me?” Her words came out in a hiss. “I am not a—did you call me a cupcake?”
“If the shoe fits. Or skirt, I guess.” Tingles zipped up her side as Weaver fluffed the feathers at her left hip.
He measured her torso and the length of her arms, shoulder to wrist, as casually as if he’d done it hundreds of times.
“Did you follow me here?” he asked, writing the measurements down for Spangle.
Periwinkle gritted her teeth. “No, I didn’t follow you here. Lord Milori has me here to keep me out of trouble because he suspects I’m up to something, and Floss said she could use the help.”
“Well, I never said he wasn’t clever. Hold this.
” Weaver put one end of the measuring tape to Periwinkle’s shoulder, then crouched and held the other end to her ankle.
Periwinkle bit her lip at the brush of his fingers against her skin.
“Yeah, you’re taller than Anise. Spangle’s never going to forgive you.
That’s what you get for spying on me, I guess. ”
“Again, I am not spying on you. I didn’t know you worked here,” Periwinkle said irritably. “I thought you were a dream-tal—”