Chapter 29
Weaver set down the shattered pieces of the loom and held his head in his hands.
Periwinkle stared in horror. “Broken?”
Her voice was a whisper. Her thoughts were shouting.
Weaver nodded heavily. “The story in the book said the Snow Globe Mountain workshop was never the same again after Morpheus didn’t come back. This must’ve been what it meant.” He braced himself on the edge of the table, eyes glittering with unshed tears. “It’s all over. And it’s all my fault.”
Periwinkle fluttered to the other side of the table, tracing all the broken pieces. Her wings were trembling; her stomach felt full of lead.
Was this how Stella and Orion had felt when their friend hadn’t come home from the Mainland? After months spent planning and creating his drum, after years spent repairing it—all that trying, and they’d still lost their friend.
Maybe they had given up, in the end. Someday, Periwinkle and Weaver would learn what had happened, whatever of Stella’s secrets she’d chosen to leave behind. But there was no time to read the end of her story now.
As Periwinkle looked out one of the cave windows, toward the second star, she imagined all her friends hard at work on the Mainland. She imagined Stella sitting in this room long ago, putting all her imagination and talent into helping her friend before he left.
And this was when Periwinkle realized something important.
She didn’t know the end of the dream-talents’ story. But she knew the middle. She knew that Stella and Orion and Morpheus had done something with their talent worth telling a story about. Maybe, for now, that knowledge was enough.
Periwinkle gave a sharp inhale, turning toward the table again. “Let me see the loom,” she said.
Weaver pushed it toward her, showing her how the broken bits should’ve fitted together. “But I can’t do anything with this. It’s in pieces.”
Periwinkle just gave him a secret smile. “The solution might be simpler than you think.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean—” She picked up the pieces of the frame, examining them. “This is the Winter Woods. We aren’t warm fairies, and melted ice doesn’t flow in our rivers, and it doesn’t fall from our skies. We have ice, we have snow.”
Gently, just as she’d done with Icaria’s crushed snow sculpture and the dress form Spangle had broken, Periwinkle aimed a wisp of her magic at the loom, at the frame and the little sticks around its edges.
“And,” she said as her frost magic bound the loom together, “we have frost.”
When she was done, she glanced up at Weaver across the table. Starlight twinkled on the geode walls of the cave and in his eyes.
“You fixed it.” He stared at her in wonder, chest rising and falling. “Of course you did.”
She lifted the loom gingerly, checking her work. “It’s not a forever solution. You might want to make a new one someday. But for now…” Her voice trailed off. “Maybe this will work.”
“It will.” His voice was thick as he tugged a pouch from his pocket. Then he laid the luminous skein of dream-thread on the workbench.
“It doesn’t look like much,” she said. Even with the loom working, would they have enough to work with?
“No, it doesn’t,” he admitted. “But dreams are broader and stronger than nightmares, and the Sapphire Mine journal gives alloy ratios for making dream-thread blends. I’ll check their notes again and take a look around.”
“Okay,” Periwinkle said, trying to ignore the nerves rattling around her stomach.
Weaver would find something. She knew he would.
He had to.
Suddenly, though, she caught sight of the web, still twinkling in the starlight.
As Weaver began rereading the Sapphire Mine journal, Periwinkle walked slowly toward the workshop entrance, an idea taking shape in her mind.
The web was fine but strong. Her dreams had shown it catching her friends, protecting the Pixie Dust Tree. Boldly, though not necessarily feeling bold, Periwinkle laid a hand on its edge.
The dream magic had been true to her. It had found her, shown her what to look for, led her on. It had helped her all this way, without her ever asking.
Maybe, just here, just now, it wanted her to ask.
Because it would take bravery to ask. To trust—just one more time.
Weaver might find something in the workshop. But Periwinkle knew it would take strong magic to destroy the nightmares and wake the winter fairies.
Please, she thought to the dream magic in the web. Please help us.
An answer never came out loud, but the web seemed now to spark a question inside her. Not a question from her, but to her, from the web itself and the magic within it.
Why? it seemed to ask.
She thought, at first, of Stella and Orion, and how the dream-talent fairies had wanted to protect their friend Morpheus. Then she thought of Dougal, who’d trapped all the winter fairies in the Hall of Winter, who was himself trapped by bitterness.
Periwinkle felt the web cringe away. No, she thought. Not that, I don’t want that.
She didn’t know how to explain. So Periwinkle let her own memories flood through her, everything she’d seen and done and felt.
A story. A tapestry. A truth.
The fear of those trapped inside the Hall of Winter, Dougal’s quest for revenge. Her terror for the Pixie Dust Root, before she’d understood what the nightmares really meant.
Then quieter feelings came. Dougal and Weaver, aching with grief over Selene. Lord Milori, quietly doing his best to help.
The wonder on Weaver’s face as he searched the workshops, studied the journals.
She’d seen his heart. And, without intending to, she’d given him hers. She’d found new magic in the world and built a home for it within herself.
And despite everything, after being hurt, she’d been brave enough to open her heart again.
Please, she asked, just once more.
And the dream magic answered.
As she watched, a new thread stretched, long and elegant, across the web.
And then, just as easily as if it were a real spiderweb, the web fell loose from the rock walls and into Periwinkle’s outstretched hands.
Staring at it, Periwinkle knew the dream magic had given her a rare and beautiful gift.
Rare, beautiful—and powerful enough to save them all.
“Weaver?” she called. He stopped digging through the cabinets and flew to her side, dark eyes even more incredulous than before. “Do you think the alloy rules still apply if we weave the dream-thread into this?”
Weaver drew in a shaky breath. “I’m not sure any of the rules apply to something like this,” he said. “But you let me worry about that part.”
It occurred to Periwinkle that she could’ve felt something like loss, handing over a treasure like the web to someone else. But as she put the web into Weaver’s hands and he laid it carefully over the loom, the feel of magic in the workshop only seemed to grow stronger.
And then Weaver went to work.
“Two to one, flax to dream-thread—the ratio of the web thread to dream-thread is much steeper, but the web’s its own kind of dream magic,” he muttered. Taking the sapphire spindle from his pocket, he popped the golden whorl off with his thumb. “I don’t have a shuttle, but this will do.”
Periwinkle watched him, his skillful hands, the curls moving at the nape of his neck as he unwound the skein of dream-thread. But suddenly, he stopped.
“What?” she asked. Weaver bit his lip, looking hesitant.
“I’ve been handling your dreams and your nightmares with gloves all this time,” he said, lowering his eyes from hers.
“And it’s so strange. Because I was creating this barrier between me and whatever was inside your head, while still taking something so personal. Something that was never mine to take.”
Periwinkle put a hand on his cheek. “I’ve forgiven you for that,” she reminded him. “And you’re not taking anything from me now. I’m giving these dreams to you freely. To save the people we love.”
“I know.” His voice was quiet and ashamed. “But I don’t have my gloves anymore. I can’t even give you a semblance of privacy now.”
Periwinkle frowned. “You couldn’t see my dreams before?”
“I could sort of sense them—catch glimpses,” he said. “But I never saw them properly until the night I took my gloves off and went into your nightmare.” Periwinkle nodded, taking this in.
Weaver was giving her all the power here. She already knew what she wanted to do with it.
“So look at them properly,” she said. “If you want to.”
“I do. I want to see them.” He paused, looking into her face. “I want to see you.”
“Okay,” she said quietly. “We’ll do it together.”
Weaver unwound the dream-thread a little way and knotted it around the end of the spindle, then began nimbly to shuttle it through the gaps in the web. “I don’t have a comb,” he said. “I need you to tamp down the weft by hand.”
“Will the dreams disappear if I touch them?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Not once they’re woven into the web.”
Periwinkle nodded and moved toward the loom, using her fingertips to bunch all the dream-thread closer to its edge.
And then she saw them.
She wasn’t inside her dreams. But she could see them, hear them. Feel them. With the fibers of each dream blended and spun into thread, woven into the dream-magic web, the story and sense of them all ran together like the shifting colors of a sunset.
When she looked up at Weaver, she knew by the soft set of his mouth that he was seeing and hearing and feeling the same things.
Once, he bit back a laugh as his knuckle brushed the shimmering thread. “What’s so funny?” Periwinkle asked.
But she already knew. She could sense the dream, just as well as he did.
“This one,” he said. “You kept asking for chamomile tea—”
“And the sparrow man in the tearoom kept pointing to rabbits and ferrets,” she groaned. “‘What about this one? How about this one?’ When I woke up, I was sure there would be a bunch of animals crowded into my house.”
“You’ve had worse dreams,” Weaver said, smiling ruefully. And it was my fault, she knew he was thinking.
“And I’ve had better ones,” she countered. “And that was because of you.”
Periwinkle and Weaver worked as the moon rose, peering in and out of the thick veil of clouds that still covered the sky.
Weaver’s long-fingered hands were impossibly clever, impossibly careful as he wove the iridescent dream-thread through the golden web, with Periwinkle inexpertly straightening up the weft and Legs ducking in and out to weave in his own contribution.
Finally, Weaver stood up, rolling out his wrists, arching his back.
“This part’s finished,” he said. “Help me lift it from the frame? I have to full this to get rid of the gaps in the weaving.”
“Do you need me to melt some ice?” Periwinkle asked. She’d done it several times for the fulling-talents in Floss’s workshop that week.
Weaver smiled. “No need. I’m going to try a new technique.” He took a silver bowl from one of the worktables and carried it beneath the mountainside window, and Periwinkle watched in astonishment as the bowl filled slowly with moonlight.
“‘Fulling in moonlight, rather than melted ice, has proved most efficacious to prevent fraying.’ That was in the Sapphire Mine journal,” he said.
Weaver was almost glowing with happiness as he plunged the web tapestry into the bowl, scrunching and scrubbing it so the dream-thread began to expand.
But suddenly he paused, clearing his throat. “It would go faster with two.”
“I’ll help,” Periwinkle said. And when she slid her hands into the bowl, she gave a quiet gasp.
Her dreams were encouragingly durable beneath her fingertips. But more surprising was the shimmering magic they released in the bowl full of moonlight, fizzing and sparkling from Periwinkle’s palms all the way up to her wingtips, rendering her dreams even more clearly in her thoughts and senses.
“I know. I feel like I’m swimming inside your mind,” Weaver said hoarsely. Working at the tapestry in the bowl, his fingers brushed hers. Linked with hers, slowly. Goose bumps prickled over Periwinkle’s skin as he met her gaze.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
Weaver shrugged, glancing down at the basin and back to Periwinkle’s face. “What can you really think about when you’re faced with this much beauty?” he asked softly. “I’m just taking it all in.”
A moment later, both of them went back to work. But every now and again, Periwinkle would look up to find his eyes on her, deep and watchful as midnight.
When the tapestry was fulled, Weaver lifted it from the bowl and took it to the stretching frame. Forearms straining, he hung it from the hooks, where it glittered like a winter sunset.
And there it was. Spun fine, perfectly woven, stretching out on the frame, and thickened by fulling so not a single nightmare could escape it. Periwinkle ran a hand gingerly over the weaving, taking one last look at her dreams.
The snowball fight with Gliss and Spike. Coating the trees in the Frost Forest with sugar. Flying as fast as Selene through the woods.
Weaver, fighting off her last nightmare.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “You did beautiful work.” With a patched-together loom, Periwinkle’s dreams, the spindle, and the web, he had created something truly magical and rare.
Beside her, Weaver slid his hands into his pockets, looking uncharacteristically nervous. “I just want to undo some of the mistakes I’ve made,” he said. “To use my talent for something good. Something pure.” He glanced hesitantly down at Periwinkle, cheeks flushed.
This was who he’d been meant to be all along. Not a catcher and keeper of nightmares, but a spinner of dreams. A weaver of reverie, with stories in his hands and stars in his eyes.
Again, she felt that pull in her chest.
“How does it feel?” she asked. There was yearning on his face as he cupped her jaw and leaned his forehead against hers, in his voice when he finally answered.
“It feels like magic,” he said. “It feels like being you.”
Looking into Weaver’s luminous eyes, feeling their noses brush and their breath mingle, Periwinkle thought she might forget how to breathe.
He’d finally seen it. All the beauty and goodness she’d wanted to show him from the very beginning.
The web and the workshop—she knew they’d been the end of their quest.
But it had been Weaver she’d found at the end of the thread.