Chapter 24
Periwinkle covered her eyes with her hands. The world was turning inside out, outside in.
“The dreams were really about Selene,” she said slowly. “But what about the black mark you showed me by the well? It was a sign. The Pixie Dust Root was rotting.”
Weaver shook his head. His dark eyes were pained.
“I made the mark with one of my nightmares,” he said.
“There’s no rot in the root, and the tree’s not in danger.
Never was.” Periwinkle thought of the sick feeling the mark had given her—the direct echo of the feeling of the nightmare-thread inside the hall.
“And the storm tonight?” she asked. “What about that?”
“Just a winter storm.” Weaver grimaced. “Your nightmares about the storm came from me. That’s what I had to do, bend your dreams toward nightmare so I could spin them when they left your mind. But I didn’t know—”
“Stop,” Periwinkle said. She pushed her hands against her chest, like she could make her thundering heart slow down. “Just stop.”
Weaver stayed quiet, watching her, looking miserable. With his mask pushed up on his forehead, Periwinkle could see the exhausted lavender circles beneath his eyes.
Her nightmares had been tinted lavender, too. That hazy violet fog had infiltrated her dreams, poisoned her sleep.
She’d been so afraid. And it had been all his fault.
“So the tree was never in danger,” Periwinkle repeated hollowly. “And Lord Milori was never keeping it all a secret. And you, who lectured me about not pretending and telling the truth—you lied through your teeth.”
Lord Milori, who she’d blamed for hiding the truth, who’d been innocent all along. And the Pixie Dust Root—safe.
How could good news feel so awful?
Periwinkle leaned dizzily against one of the ice pillars on the hall threshold. As Dougal pressed his ear to the hall door and listened, he gripped his wrist, and Periwinkle noticed a bracelet peek from beneath his sleeve.
It was a match to the one Weaver had given her, shimmering with dream light.
“So all of this is for Selene, but why?” Periwinkle asked. She couldn’t keep the shake out of her voice; she felt like she was fighting the current in the border river all over again. “Dougal, Selene was lost in a storm. Her death was a tragedy, but it was an accident.”
“No.” Dougal turned away from the door, jaw set hard as ice.
“That storm was out of our control. But the rest of it?” He shook his head, seething.
“It’s Milori’s fault that Selene was sent out in the storm, because he waited too long to ask for supplies.
It’s his fault for giving up on the search for her after only a week.
It’s the Keeper’s fault that he couldn’t find a way to locate her, even with the whole Hall of Winter at his fingertips.
And it’s everyone else’s fault for carrying on with their lives when ours stopped.
For agreeing to abandon the search for her, after almost no time at all. ”
Periwinkle reeled. “Who says Lord Milori didn’t get the flu supplies as quickly as he could?
And who says the Keeper didn’t try?” she said.
“Lord Milori called the search off because winter was already late. The Mainland couldn’t wait anymore.
” Even Periwinkle knew Lord Milori hadn’t had a choice, there.
There was a balance to the timing of the seasons.
The fairies could only tinker with it so much before something was well and truly damaged.
Periwinkle looked to Weaver, then, thinking of how they’d talked about Selene only the night before. You never told me you were friends, she’d said.
You never asked, he’d said back. He’d let her think she’d been inconsiderate and self-centered, while he’d been the one hiding something all along.
All around them, the storm howled, the wind whistling high and eerie, matching pitch with the horrors inside the hall.
Periwinkle leaned her back full against the pillar, feeling suddenly exhausted. “So your wife is gone. And this is your answer. The fairies inside are in agony, Dougal. And you’re a healer,” she said desperately. “You just wanted to find Selene. You don’t want to hurt people.”
“Don’t you think I tried?” Dougal exploded.
“I researched constantly. I read everything on the magic of finding. I read new, popular books and books gathering dust in corners. Dewey even let me into his secret corner of the library. That’s how I came across that story about the children and their dreams that he translated.
And that’s where I got the idea for all this. ”
Periwinkle felt like she’d been punched in the stomach.
Weaver had told her about the legend. She’d just never thought to ask where he’d discovered it.
With everything else happening, it shouldn’t have hurt so much that Dougal had found Dewey’s private library first and misused it, but the knowledge stung.
“So Dewey let you use the private section,” she said. “He said some of the books were sensitive, and he didn’t trust everyone with them. Now I see why.”
Dougal waved this away. “Well, it failed at first, anyway. Weaver couldn’t spin his own dreams. We couldn’t believe our luck when we found you,” he said. “And then we came up with the story about the Pixie Dust Root, and a way to make everyone understand.”
We couldn’t believe. Our luck. Periwinkle looked at Weaver, wondering if it was possible to choke on someone else’s words. “I see.”
“You don’t understand,” he rasped. “I had to help him. Because it was my fault. I had the fairy flu, so Selene hurried and cut too close to Snow Globe Mountain because of me. Because she was my friend, and she wanted to help.” He swallowed hard, shaking his head.
“I got better, eventually. But she never came back.”
Periwinkle put a hand over her mouth.
“You can’t even imagine how miserable I’ve been,” Dougal said. “How I’ve imagined her suffering. And now, I’m helping them see. Once they do, I’ll cut the thread, and the nightmares will end.”
Dougal opened his oak-leaf jacket. There, inside a pocket, were the magic scissors she and Weaver had found in the Bobbin Wood. Periwinkle’s heart flew into her throat.
“Dougal.” She reached out a shaking hand. “Please. Let me have the scissors. Just—let it be over.”
“No. They have to understand,” he ground out.
“They will. They’ll understand now.” She moved toward him, voice pleading. “I can talk to anyone. I can talk to everyone. I can—”
“Can you bring Selene back?” he said. “Can you undo what Weaver and I have gone through?”
“Of course not. No one can,” she said exhaustedly.
“I know it must have been hard to watch people’s lives change, while yours stood still.
But Lord Milori deeply regrets her death.
It troubles the Keeper that they haven’t been able to find her.
You heard what he was saying in his nightmares, how sorry he is.
” Weaver’s face took on that unsettled look again.
But Dougal’s wild eyes didn’t change. He seemed almost delirious, like his exhaustion and sadness had almost crushed him, and this obsession was the only thing keeping him tethered to the rest of the world.
“Nice thoughts. Nice words,” he said. “They’re cheap.
” He paused, turning toward the closed hall doors, like he was surveying what he’d done.
That was when Periwinkle moved.
She was no fast-flying fairy. But she was a frost-talent who’d been racing through practices for months.
When she sprang from the ground and lunged at Dougal’s jacket for the scissors, she was so quick he hardly knew what had happened until she flung open the hall doors. Dougal shouted something indistinct as she tore inside, but somehow he didn’t catch her.
The magic scissors caught the light of the starcatchers as Periwinkle burst into the Hall of Winter, bolting toward the first carving Dougal had wrapped—strangled—with the nightmare-thread.
Inside the circle of nightmares and all through the hall, fairies lay still or squirming, quiet or crying out at the horror of their dreams.
Periwinkle opened the scissors and closed the blades around the first segment of nightmare-thread with a snap.
From archway to archway, she circled the hall’s perimeter. Snap. Snap. Snap. The scissors cut each length of nightmare-thread with ease, and Periwinkle was careful not to touch it as it came apart.
Her whole body pounded with her heartbeat when she turned back to the winter fairies on the floor, ready to help them as they woke.
But the fairies slept on. The nightmare shadows still slithered along the walls.
For a second, Periwinkle couldn’t breathe.
Dougal and Weaver hovered, frozen, in the doorway.
“I’d thought—” Dougal gaped, shaking his head. “The scissors—”
“They should’ve destroyed it,” Weaver said. “The scissors should’ve destroyed the nightmares.” He looked like he was going to be sick.
Periwinkle fluttered to the ground, bracing her hands on her knees, trying to breathe.
They’d talked about this, she suddenly remembered. That very first night they’d sat on Periwinkle’s floor, musing over dreams and nightmares. Watching her darkest dreams, she’d asked Weaver if the magic tools could destroy them.
We’ll be careful until we can test the theory, he’d said. Watching him now, Periwinkle shook her head.
“You should’ve known,” she said furiously.
“You should’ve known it would take more than cutting the threads to destroy them.
The scissors and the spindle are magic, but being able to spin or weave or cut the dreams isn’t the same as being able to make or unmake them.
” Periwinkle breathed raggedly as she stared around the hall, at the tapestries and banquet tables and the dance floor, at the nightmares slipping horribly through everything.
“The nightmares are still in force. And these fairies? They are still trapped.”
Weaver’s face was pale with horror. Dougal looked confused, like he’d truly believed he’d seen exactly how this night would go. His arrogance shook and shocked Periwinkle, right down to her bones.
But there was nothing surprising about Dougal’s cowardice when he turned toward the door and fled.