Chapter 12 #4
“Nope.” Weaver gave a wry laugh, shuffling his boots along the floor. “Just reckless enough to follow you.” He looked up at her ruefully, and Periwinkle felt her heart skip a beat.
She had to say something. Periwinkle always had something to say. But before she could find the words, she noticed where the spiders were moving.
“Weaver,” she said quietly, nodding in their direction.
The dream spiders had traveled a dozen different paths over the workshop walls. But they were all converged now around the bobbin table. Periwinkle moved forward, conscious of how close Weaver was to her side.
Legs dropped onto Weaver’s shoulder. Deep in the shadows, she caught a glint of gold.
There, gathering dust on the table’s edge, was a pair of scissors.
“Weaver, look,” she said softly. Gingerly, she picked up the scissors and held them out to him.
Light filled Weaver’s face.
The scissors were the pure gold color of pixie dust, their handles engraved in a pattern of cobwebs and moons and stars. They were a tool, of course, but to Periwinkle they looked more like art.
She crouched, putting herself level with Legs on Weaver’s shoulder, her voice a joyful undertone. “Look where you brought us, you beautiful little thing.” Legs didn’t answer, but there was no mistaking the happy twinkle in the tiny spider’s eyes.
When Periwinkle straightened, she and Weaver were almost nose to nose. His breath on her cheek was the only movement in the workshop, in all the Bobbin Wood.
“They’re real,” he finally said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “I don’t think I actually believed they were real.”
“Do you believe they’re real now?” she answered softly.
She didn’t mean to squeeze his arm. But there they were, surrounded by dreams, with magic in their hands. Weaver swallowed hard, but didn’t pull away.
“Maybe—no. Maybe I knew they were real before,” he said. “Maybe I just didn’t understand what it would be worth to find them.”
Periwinkle met Weaver’s eyes, deep as the forest, dark as sleep. He scanned her face, throat working as he tucked a strand of silver hair behind her ear.
Periwinkle shivered from wingtip to toe when his eyes dipped to her mouth.
Spiders and spiderwebs, woodwork and dreamwork. The workshop was full of unfamiliar things. But only one of them made her hands shake.
Suddenly, Weaver cleared his throat and drew away. Periwinkle flittered back, swallowing her disappointment and giving a quick, awkward smile as he wrapped the scissors in a length of spider silk and slid them in his jacket pocket.
“We should—” he started, glancing toward the door.
Periwinkle nodded. “Yes. Yeah, I agree.” She was downstairs in a jingle, pretending to study the abandoned projects on the table while she tried to parse what had just happened.
Whatever Weaver was thinking, he was just as silent. But before they left the workshop, he studied the spiderwebs covering the ceiling one more time, touched the spider silk wound around the bobbins, ran his hands over the carvings in the walls. There was longing in his face.
“Are you looking for something?” she asked.
“It’s fine,” he said. “We’ve got the scissors. So we found what we needed.”
He hadn’t answered her question, though. He was looking for something.
Whatever it was, Periwinkle hoped he’d find it soon.
The spiders didn’t follow them home through the Bobbin Wood; the little creatures trailed one way and another, creating a miniature aurora beneath the canopy, and twilight fell around Periwinkle, Weaver, and Legs as they followed their dwindling trail of spider silk back to the edge of the Drift.
They’d been sheltered within the workshop. But the forest beyond it was somber and dark without the spiders to guide them, and the wind beyond the tree line was an unexpected slap after the stillness of the Bobbin Wood.
All of it only served to remind Periwinkle of everything they still had left to do and find.
What would it take to bring down the forest around them? To bring down a tree like the Pixie Dust Tree?
What would it take to break the very heart of Pixie Hollow?
She didn’t want to think about any of it. She wanted to think about Weaver’s face in the workshop before he’d pulled away from her, and the shimmering aurora of the spiders before they’d dispersed. But her worry must have shown on her face.
Weaver nudged her, frowning. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” she said.
He shook his head at her, mouth growing thin. “Remember what you told me,” he said. “Be honest with yourself. And be honest with me.”
It was true. She’d told him last night she wouldn’t pretend to be happy when she didn’t feel it. Periwinkle paused, squinting up at the sky, at the dusk that looked uncomfortably like storm clouds as it gathered around them.
“Have you ever—” Her throat felt dry; she had to swallow and start over to get the words out. “Have you ever seen a storm like the one in our dreams?” she asked.
Thinking of how open Weaver’s face had been earlier, she felt a strange ache as she watched him now, completely unreadable again.
“Not the storm,” he said. “Just the aftermath.”