Excerpt from “Stella and the Magic Drum,” Found in Stories of Never Land and the Mainland
Found in the Hall of Winter:
Gifted from Periwinkle to Weaver for the Book Flood. Read by Weaver and Periwinkle.
Morpheus’s talent was dreaming. But the hearts of fairies are large enough for many, many loves.
All his life, Morpheus took joy in crafting the dreams of others, and in dreaming, himself (when he could; dream-talents are notoriously poor sleepers). But he also looked after the animals of the Winter Woods and the Mainland, who were among the dearest of his friends.
His skill with them, in fact, was known from one end of the Winter Woods to the other, and every winter, when Morpheus traveled to the Mainland, his magic was unparalleled in settling the animals down for their rest. No animal-talent fairy could help them to sleep as he did.
Chipmunks, hedgehogs, groundhogs; to one and all, Morpheus brought his dreaming magic, and they loved him with the simple, gentle love of beasts.
But one winter, he flew too far to the north.
The animals were fiercer there than he had seen before, and only a few animal-talents could coax them to their winter nap.
When a huge bear snapped at his wings and nearly caught them, Morpheus was determined to return to the North again the next season—but not empty-handed.
When he returned to Pixie Hollow, he asked his friends for help.
Stella and Orion were both dream-talent fairies, as renowned in their craft as Morpheus; more importantly, their friendship ran long and true.
Both of them agreed to help him, and while most of the winter fairies rested through spring, beginning to prepare come late summer and autumn, Stella and Orion worked all the while.
Orion brought forward his idea first. As adept at music as Morpheus was with animals, Orion carved a lute and strung it with dream-thread.
Morpheus turned out to be a pleasant singer, but his first attempts on the lute sent animals and fairies alike running.
His latter attempts with the instrument were, unfortunately, no better.
Orion’s next idea was a harp. A harp, he reasoned, would be simpler to play.
Alas, it was not.
Orion tried to help Morpheus practice, encouraging his singing, testing their efforts on the animals of the Winter Woods. All the while, Stella stared out her window at the second star, thinking how to use her talent to help her friend.
The night before Morpheus was due to return to the Mainland, she disappeared into her workshop and worked without stopping at her legendary loom. From sunset to moonset, the click of her shuttle was the only sound inside Snow Globe Mountain.
And the next morning, she brought her friend a gift. It was, in fact, a magic drum.
“The frame is made of birch,” Stella said. “And the head is woven of gentle dreams. When you sing and play, the creatures of the Mainland will go gladly into hibernation.”
Morpheus had struggled to play the lute and the harp. But he could play the drum in time with his voice and the gently beating hearts of the animals he loved, and from the first, he played the instrument well.
Stella and Orion were pleased. They both embraced him, and away with the winter fairies he flew.
And Stella’s work did not fail. Morpheus drummed and sang lullabies for the animals on the Mainland for many years.
Even far to the north, the animals let themselves trust and be tamed by his music, and went gladly to sleep under his care.
And every year, before Morpheus returned to the Mainland, Orion would repair the drumhead with a dream-magic needle and thread, or Stella would reweave it, if it was too worn out from playing.
A few winter fairies said the animals loved the drum for the northern lights that it resembled.
Others insisted it was that the friends’ power at work together—their dream-talent, Orion’s music, Morpheus’s love, and Stella’s clever mind—was simply an unstoppable force.
But one year Morpheus did not come home from the Mainland, and the winter fairies who had traveled with him did not know where he had gone. Stella and Orion waited for months, but at last, they knew their friend was lost to them, and they mourned him greatly.
And the Snow Globe Mountain workshop was never the same again.