Chapter 18
Periwinkle zipped down the mine shaft, suncatcher raised. Right, right, second left, third right, she followed the vein of gold as Weaver raced after her. She thought she heard some sort of muffled sound far behind them, but she couldn’t stop.
Follow the needle, the notes had said, and she was, just like she’d done in her dream: following the only glittering thing in the dark as fast as her wings could carry her.
The dream magic was leading her. It wanted her to find the spindle.
The storm would come, but first they’d heal the rot in the Pixie Dust Root. And Weaver—Weaver would finally feel the wonder. He would finally understand.
All at once, the tunnel ended, and Periwinkle drew up short at an open doorway that led into a dark, cavernous room. Weaver was at her shoulder a moment later, panting from their race. She raised the suncatcher, its light flickering alone in the deep.
The workshop shone.
“Weaver,” she whispered. His breath hitched, but he didn’t speak.
They needed more light. Periwinkle hurried to a starcatcher on the wall and touched it, and incredibly, it glowed to life. The workshop sparkled more and more brightly the more starcatchers she lit, like a jewel being polished to a shine.
Though the walls of the tunnel had been thoroughly mined, the workshop walls had been left alone.
Deep blue and pale blue and spearmint green stones sparkled in clusters in the gray rock walls, with dashes of gold surfacing here and there.
Just like in Floss’s workshop, racks hung from the ceiling, weighed down with bobbins of spun silver, spun gold, spun sapphires and aquamarines and amethysts that trailed down like streamers.
Periwinkle ran her fingers through the glittering metal and gemstone threads and over the jewels in the walls.
Tracing the workshop’s forgotten treasures, she thought of Weaver in the Bobbin Wood workshop, touching everything he saw, and bit her lip at the memory.
“Weaver, do you see the spindle?” she called, then paused at a sound like dust falling in the corner. But Weaver didn’t answer. He stood at a table on the far side of the room, studying something Periwinkle couldn’t see.
Like the other workshop they’d found, this one was full of workbenches, these with legs of gold and tabletops of frost or maybe diamond. Periwinkle moved to the closest one and began to search, and Legs hopped down to do the same.
Periwinkle’s first thought was that whoever had used the cluttered table nearest to her had been a kindred spirit; the bench looked more like Periwinkle’s messy house than Weaver’s neat workbench at Floss’s.
Beneath a layer of dirt and dust, she found dozens of shining tools—a pincushion stuffed with needles and pearl-topped pins, a jeweler’s glass, spider-silk pouches, chisels and tongs, and even a little axe with a golden handle.
Legs climbed his way over all of it, liquid black eyes looking curiously on every artifact.
The next table was covered in projects, some finished, some mysterious in their half-done states.
A length of blended dream-thread was tied around the stem of a baby’s golden rattle; a macramé hanger of the same thread was wrapped around an enormous sapphire starcatcher.
A plain silver square shimmered the aquamarine and peridot and rose of good dreams, and when Periwinkle moved closer, she saw it was a hazy picture repeating itself over its smooth, tarnished surface.
A nearby bench held a collection of harps of various sizes, most only half-finished, but the strings of the harps that were strung glowed with dream magic.
“This place is incredible,” she called to Weaver over her shoulder.
“I know,” he said. Still, Weaver sounded distracted.
One bench and then another, and then another and another.
Periwinkle sifted through the piles of beautiful, abandoned pieces, frost and diamond boxes and golden hammers and wreaths of gems and a half-painted picture.
How many fairies had worked in this workshop?
Whose ideas had brought such extraordinary work into being?
And then, beside a speckled jewel box full of dream-colored rings, there it was.
The spindle.
A week before, Periwinkle wouldn’t have known what a spindle was, or what it looked like. But being at Floss’s had taught her.
The spindles Weaver used from day to day were pretty but plain, just simple wooden rods with a whorl at one end.
But every tool in the mine workshop sparkled like pirate’s treasure, and the spindle was no exception.
It was a single wand of pale blue sapphire, cut and polished to a shine, a little longer than Periwinkle’s hand.
A gleaming golden whorl fitted with a small hook was set at one end.
If a spindle existed that could spin dreams out of her head and save the Pixie Dust Root, this had to be it.
“Look!” Periwinkle turned to Weaver and held it up, triumphant.
Weaver glanced up, then looked back to at his table. Then his head whipped toward Periwinkle again, eyes lighting up. “You found it?” he exclaimed.
She nodded, flittering toward him. “Back over there.” She held out the spindle and Weaver reached out with cautious hands, tracing its faceted sapphire surface and golden whorl.
“It’s amazing,” he said. But his voice sounded choked.
“What’s wrong?” Periwinkle frowned, pushing into his personal space like she always did. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing’s wrong. It’s a journal or something.” Weaver pulled her closer, turning a few pages and pointing. “Start here,” he said thickly.
Periwinkle wasn’t sure how she was supposed to concentrate, cradled between Weaver’s arms and the table. But he was so overwhelmed by whatever he’d read that he hardly seemed to notice how close they were.
The book, it turned out, was some kind of group diary kept up by dozens of dream-talents, but mainly by Stella, Morpheus, and Orion, the three she’d heard the most about.
Starting where Weaver had told her to, Periwinkle read excitedly through pages of notes on how to give good dreams and keep away nightmares, and more—so much more.
The book had entries on what things in Pixie Hollow could be made stronger and safer with dream magic, entries on how to train new dream-talents, on the dream-talents’ work with physical objects.
There were plans and patterns for items like the harps, the starcatcher and dream-thread net she’d seen, nets to capture bad dreams, talismans to take to children on the Mainland who slept badly, and items for storing beautiful dreams to watch again and again.
Beneath the patterns and instructions were all sorts of adjustments they’d made as things had failed or worked well over time.
“Do you know what this means?” Weaver asked.
“It’s amazing!” she burst out. “You’re going to learn so much!”
“Yes. Of course. But—” Weaver paused. Periwinkle looked over her shoulder at the raw edge in his voice.
“But what?” she asked softly.
“There are so many names in here,” he said.
“Dream-talents were like baking-talents or craft-talents or frost-talents. They weren’t strange, rare exceptions.
They weren’t alone.” Weaver’s eyes were so bright, and the color in his cheeks was high, but his hands—his hands on the book were tremulous, so very careful.
“There used to be more of us,” he said again. “And we could do all kinds of things. Not just…” He trailed off, voice getting damp. “Look at this. They kept leaving notes for each other. They had private jokes and running bets and ideas to help each other get better.”
And hearing the emotion in his voice, Periwinkle suddenly remembered two things.
She thought first of Weaver moving around the Bobbin Wood workshop, obviously amazed by everything. But though he’d been thrilled at finding the scissors, she’d thought he was looking for something else even as they were leaving.
The second thing she remembered was a conversation they’d had a couple nights earlier.
Weaver had asked her about the Keeper’s sources—whatever he’d referenced for his notes in the dream-talent book.
Obviously, Dewey had been getting his information somewhere, and Weaver had had so many questions about what those other books were, none of them practical.
Periwinkle had been confused, almost irritated; they couldn’t ask Dewey about the original records, and they didn’t have time to go look for them on their own.
She couldn’t figure out why Weaver would want to waste time hunting down more reading material for them to work through when the Keeper’s neatly written notes were (mostly) clear, short, and right in front of them.
But this was why. The look on Weaver’s face now was why.
Periwinkle was one of so many frost-talents.
It had never occurred to her how isolated he must have felt all that time, separated from the other fairies by his incredible talent and his secrets.
He’d needed to hold the journals of other dream-talent fairies, read their words, consider their ideas and their work, and know he wasn’t alone.
She was so glad to be there with him. To watch Weaver coming to see the world for the very first time as she’d always seen it. Even with tired violet circles under his eyes, he was lit from within like Periwinkle had never seen him before.
She lifted a hand to his cheek, heart aching at the raw amazement in every line of him.
Suddenly, though, Weaver straightened, trying to collect himself. “Do you hear that?” he asked. He moved toward the far end of the workshop, staring at the ceiling.
“Hear what?” she asked. Periwinkle followed him, poking her head out into the tunnel. They waited in the doorway together, listening hard, but everything was quiet.
“Nothing, I guess,” Weaver said. But still, he didn’t move. Periwinkle looked down at the spindle, its surface cool in her shaking hands.
She didn’t know who had made it, or how long it been here, hidden, waiting. But the dream magic had shown them where to find it. And soon, Weaver would use it to make thread out of Periwinkle’s dreams.
And from the look of the sky they’d watched that afternoon, they had no time to waste.
Periwinkle nodded toward the mine shaft again. “We should get back,” she said. But just then, several things happened.
First, Periwinkle lost her grip on the spindle. She’d been turning it this way and that in the starlight when it flew out of her fingers and she lurched for it, catching it just before it hit the pebbled floor, knocking hard into the tunnel wall as she did.
Gripping the spindle tightly, she held it up to Weaver, breathing a sigh of relief. “It’s okay,” she reassured him. But then came the sound of trickling dust again.
Periwinkle looked up, and Weaver’s eyes followed hers.
As quickly as Periwinkle had bolted toward the falling spindle, Weaver reached out and grabbed her hand, yanking her out of the hall and through the workshop doorway just as the shaft ceiling caved in with a sound like thunder.
Rocks collapsed and dust flew and Periwinkle cried out, clutching the spindle in one hand and the front of Weaver’s shirt in the other.
When everything had gone quiet, the two of them were standing just inside the workshop door, Periwinkle shaking from wingtip to toe.
“It’s okay,” she said, voice trembling, holding up the spindle. “It’s okay. I didn’t drop it. I didn’t—”
“I don’t care.” Weaver took the spindle and set it on the nearest workbench with a dull thud. When he pulled her into his arms, Periwinkle felt he was shaking, too.
“I’m fine,” she said. “You really don’t—”
“No.” His voice was sharp. Weaver drew back to look at her, putting a hand to her cheek when he saw he’d startled her. “You promised, Periwinkle,” he said more softly. “You promised you wouldn’t fake it. Don’t pretend you’re fine, because you aren’t.”
She nodded shakily, hiding her face in his collar and breathing in the scent of resin, the feel of raven feathers. “You pulled me back,” she said, voice muffled by his waistcoat. You pulled me back toward you.
Weaver just nodded, burying his face in her hair.
His fingers were callused where they gripped her shoulders, the evidence of his needlework and spinning and weaving, of all the beautiful things he’d made.
His heart was crashing like an avalanche in his chest, so hard Periwinkle could feel it against her own. It made her feel breathless.
He hadn’t even hesitated. And he hadn’t even looked at the spindle when she’d checked that it was undamaged.
Suddenly, Periwinkle looked up. “Where’s Legs?”
“Right over there.” Weaver nodded at a table halfway across the workshop. Hearing his name, Legs jumped down and crossed the room to them, hopping first onto Weaver’s wrist, then to Periwinkle’s, then back to Weaver’s, looping their wrists together with a gossamer spider-silk bracelet.
“I think he wants us to keep an eye on each other,” Weaver said, and Periwinkle nodded against his shoulder. For a moment, the two of them just looked down at their wrists.
When the dust finally cleared, Weaver lifted their hands to his lips and kissed Periwinkle’s knuckles, and Legs’s bracelet broke, falling into torn threads on the ground. Weaver steered Periwinkle behind himself and moved toward the hallway to see what he could.
But there was nothing to see. Where before there had been a tunnel and a door were now a pile of rock and no sign of the sky, clear, stormy, or otherwise.
Because the two of them were trapped inside the Sapphire Mine.