Chapter 12 #2
The Drift was the quietest place Periwinkle had ever been in the Winter Woods.
If you stared at it from the top, you might think you were still in Snowcap Glade; with the sun high overhead, the Drift could’ve just been another sweep of blinding white snow.
But for the fairy who dared to get closer, it was clear that one rise—this rise—of snow was much bigger than all the others.
As tall as any tree in Mistletoe Terrace or Evergreen Overlook, the Drift was a huge dome of packed snow, like an upside-down bowl at the edge of the glade.
There might be a forest underneath all that white. There might be anything.
When Periwinkle and Weaver landed at the base of the Drift, where there was a gap between the snow overhead and the snow underfoot, Periwinkle felt like a nosy guest looking beneath a host’s tablecloth. Except she’d never looked under a table at a party and found a dense, foggy thicket waiting.
“Well?” she said. “Where do we go?”
“The Keeper’s notes say the workshop’s at the center of the Bobbin Wood,” said Weaver.
“Since we’re starting at the southern edge of the Drift, a little east of center, and scouts who’ve flown over top of it say it’s about a two hours’ flight across, we should—” But he broke off at her expression. “What? Did you see something?”
Periwinkle frowned. “I’m not sure.”
Because she hadn’t seen something, exactly, deep in the mist and darkness. It was that somewhere, she’d noticed a break in it. An absence in the darkness.
Maybe—possibly—a light.
Whatever it had been, though, it was gone. Periwinkle shook herself. “So—that’s the plan?” she asked. “The Drift is two hours across, so we just fly for an hour and hope we find something?”
“Bearing mostly straight and a little to the left,” Weaver said grimly. “Not much, but it’s a clearer plan than chase the dreams. Keep an eye out.” Periwinkle nodded. Then she lifted the suncatcher she’d brought with her, and they flew ahead into the unknown.
Besides the suncatcher, it was pitch black beneath the Drift.
All around them were naked birches covered in ivy and thorns, wisps and wreaths of fog hovering high up in their branches.
Periwinkle noticed that not one of the trees was properly frosted, because no one, frost-talent or otherwise, seemed to have visited the Drift in a very long time.
But they’d found a forest there beneath the snow, and that wasn’t nothing. Periwinkle barely blinked as she watched the woods around them, feeling her heart thump, knowing her eyes must look like plates.
But there was nothing to see. Not a cardinal, not a rabbit, not a badger or a ferret—and not a spark of a dream, not in any form she could recognize or imagine.
Just themselves and the trees and the vines and the fog, as far as Periwinkle’s eyes could see.
The air was stuffy and still, the flutter of their wings the only breath of wind she felt.
“Chase the dreams,” Periwinkle mumbled under her breath. But what was there to chase? What had the Keeper’s note even meant? “Does it mean our dreams?”
“Maybe.” Weaver frowned, pressing a hand to his temple and wincing. Periwinkle racked her brain.
“I’ve dreamed about…night markets. And being on the Mainland. Other things. But mostly I’ve dreamed about the storm and the Pixie Dust Tree and the root. But how do we chase that?” She threw up her hands. “Going toward those places would take us south and away from the forest.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with our dreams about the Pixie Dust Tree,” Weaver said dismissively.
Periwinkle crossed her arms (awkward, with the suncatcher) and looked at him expectantly.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to say it like that,” he said quickly, wincing again.
“I’ve got a headache. They always put me in a bad mood. ”
“I wondered why you were always making faces and rubbing your forehead,” Periwinkle said. “Is that why? A headache? I’ve never heard of one.”
Weaver nodded. “I get them sometimes. Be glad you don’t.” Then he sighed. “To your point, I guess the clue could be to do with our specific dreams. I just don’t see how those would point us toward the workshop.”
“You’re probably right,” Periwinkle admitted. “But then, what are we supposed to make of chase the dreams?”
But then she caught a glimpse of something again, there in her periphery. Movement, and light. Periwinkle stopped and squinted, holding her lightcatcher up at the overhead canopy. Then she set her jaw, and pointed herself upward.
“Hey!” Weaver called, hurrying after her. “What are you doing?”
“I saw something.”
“Yeah, a lot of thick fog, where you might get lost and turned around.”
“No. It was something else,” she insisted. “I—” But then they reached the canopy, and both of them drew up short.
“It’s not fog,” Weaver said wonderingly. “It’s—it’s cobwebs.”
“Cobwebs?” Periwinkle asked. “But it’s too cold for bugs in Winter.”
And yet, there they were. Spiderwebs were everywhere, woven so thick they lay like blankets or clouds in the treetops, spider silk threaded around and over and between the naked birch branches.
“Didn’t”—Weaver hesitated, touching a single strand of it wound around a twig. “Didn’t the Keeper’s notes call this place the Bobbin Wood?” Periwinkle nodded, laying her hand against the tree’s silver bark, cold and papery smooth beneath her hand.
There was something here that she couldn’t understand. That she would have to understand, to find the magic scissors and save the Pixie Dust Tree.
Looking at this forest, lost to time but utterly at peace—the farthest thing possible from the chaos and destruction in her dreams—she couldn’t help the bolt of worry that pricked her heart.
In the dark and windless forest, the closest spiderweb began to stir.
“Periwinkle.” Weaver spoke her name quietly, as if he were afraid to raise his voice.
“I know,” she whispered back. Because she could already see what he saw.
A tiny iridescent spider, no bigger than Periwinkle’s pinky nail, descended slowly from the nearest web on a fine line of spider silk. It was as fuzzy as a baby bunny, with large liquid eyes and eight banded legs, the color of the aurora and Periwinkle’s good dreams.
It looked just like Legs.
Periwinkle gave a soft gasp.
She held out her hand for the little spider, curling her fingers a bit as its tiny body dropped into her palm. To Periwinkle’s surprise, Legs crawled out from Weaver’s pocket then and jumped into her hand, too.
The two little spiders slowly approached each other, circling and bumping their heads together as if they were old friends.
“What does it mean?” Weaver asked. Periwinkle thought she’d never seen him look so uncertain—so soft. Legs and the other spider looked up at him, their large, innocent eyes gleaming in the light of the suncatcher.
Then, away through the stillness of the forest, another glimmering spider dropped down from the canopy of spiderwebs and hovered at their eyeline, like it was waiting for something.
Both of the spiders leapt away from Periwinkle’s hand, as delicate as dancers in a ballet, leaving trails of spider silk swaying weightlessly in the air behind them. One jump, two, three, and they had joined the spider hanging in the distance. “Legs!” Weaver called, an anxious note in his voice.
“Let’s go,” she said urgently. “We have to follow them.”
“But the directions in the book said nothing about spiders,” Weaver said. “We don’t know what they’re doing. We might end up going the wrong way.”
Periwinkle shook her head. “These spiders, this forest, they’re our only guides. We were told to find the Bobbin Wood, and I think this is it.” She gestured at the cobwebs overhead, wrapped around the tree branches like the spools of thread in the workshop. “And now it feels like it’s guiding us.”
“And you trust it?” Though his wings were already carrying him toward where Legs had gone, Weaver’s dark eyes were surprised—worried.
“Trust the forest? Trust the dream magic?” Periwinkle cocked her head. “You know I do. Just like I know you trust Legs.” Weaver grimaced.
If she trusted anything in the world, in Never Land or on the Mainland or anywhere else, it was the magic of Pixie Hollow. The dream magic that had found her.
She was determined to show Weaver how deep and true it ran.
Then Periwinkle stilled. Because a new thought had occurred to her.
“Weaver, you said you think Legs is a dream,” she said slowly. “What if this is what the clue means?”
Periwinkle didn’t exactly intend to reach for his hand again. But she did, and he let her. So she felt the moment he understood.
Weaver’s eyes narrowed. “Chase the dreams,” he said slowly.
The look he gave her next was like sunrise. Awake, and glowing.
Weaver’s hand tightened around hers as he and Periwinkle took off after Legs and the other spiders, who were still waiting. And then the spiders were off again, too.
The dream spiders threaded their way through the forest as quick as shooting stars, three tiny points of rainbow light tossing out spider silk trails for the fairies to follow.
Periwinkle and Weaver raced after them, their wings hardly fast enough to keep up with the jumping legs of the spiders.
Periwinkle felt like she might be a shooting star, too, there in the pitch-black forest with the spiderweb canopy at its roof.
The deeper inside the Bobbin Wood she and Weaver flew, the larger the trees were around them—and the more shimmering dream spiders joined Legs and the other two spiders up ahead.
A dozen, a score, a hundred—they dropped gracefully from the canopy above, leapt into the fray, and glided ahead of the two fairies, a mass of rainbow dream light trailing color and silk through the silent wood.
It was a rare and beautiful sight, one Periwinkle knew she would never forget in all her life.
On and on they flew, rising, falling, threading through trees, slicing through thickets. And then—there it was.