Epilogue
Springtime on the Mainland
The fairies of Pixie Hollow had not dreamed for time out of mind. They had, once, when Stella and Orion and Morpheus had flown their skies amid the dreams of human children, but the talent had been lost. And in a world made of magic, you might ask, what need would there be?
Perhaps, though, the question was not one of need. Perhaps it was one of curiosity, of a love for beauty, of the magic possible when welcoming the unknown.
Perhaps the truth was merely this: Nothing is lost that cannot be found.
That day, all of the Winter Woods was finding its way to the Pixie Dust Well. New fairies, they had been told, would be arriving soon. Periwinkle and her friends finished their brunch at Blizz’s and flew away from Chilly Falls through a gently falling snow.
“Are you excited?” Gliss clutched her hands together, twirling with glee.
“Of course she is. Periwinkle, I still can’t believe you went and had a whole adventure while we were away.” Spike bumped her shoulder. “And got a boyfriend without telling us anything!”
“Guess things weren’t so inevitable after all,” Periwinkle said teasingly, narrowing her eyes at Spike.
“Look, I could tell that last day something had changed. I just didn’t know what.” Spike lifted her hands in surrender. “But I’ll definitely never accuse you of being predictable.”
Periwinkle’s winter had begun with so much fear. But her friends were finally home. And though they’d missed her on the Mainland, they’d been as safe there as they always were.
Everything was all right. It always had been.
Since Spike and Gliss had gotten back a few days earlier, the girls had spent almost every waking (and sleeping) moment together.
Periwinkle had told them the whole story—her dreams, Weaver, his misdirection with the Pixie Dust Root, their quest, the workshops, the ball, all of it—sprawled on Gliss’s bed.
And, defying her every fear, Periwinkle’s friends had listened and understood.
Gliss had cried with her and held her when Periwinkle had told them she’d dreamed they would never come home.
Spike had listened with her hand pressed to her mouth and her eyes horrified when she’d talked about their ride up Snow Globe Mountain.
Both of them, of course, had been appropriately breathless through the story about Weaver—his caginess, their contentious start. Their quest, and their kisses. And when they’d all gone to brunch a few days earlier, and Periwinkle had introduced Weaver himself to them…Well.
He’d disliked the concept of brunch as much as ever. But he’d liked her friends a lot, and the girls had felt the same.
“Look out below!” someone called, and all three girls jumped slightly as a whoosh came from overhead. When Periwinkle looked upward, she caught sight of a soaring cotton puff with a basket hanging below, driven by a maniacally laughing Selene as she stirred up the winds with a wave of her hands.
“I can’t believe Selene was hiding out all that time,” Gliss said, wonderingly.
Periwinkle shrugged, thoughtful. “She wasn’t ready before. She wasn’t ready to cope with all the changes and what they meant. But she is now.”
“What even is that thing?” Spike cocked an eyebrow.
“It’s a flying machine one of the warm season tinkers invented,” Periwinkle said. “Weaver told me yesterday.”
There was no changing Selene’s wings. Everyone knew that, Selene most of all.
But not a day went by that Periwinkle didn’t see her tearing around on Harlow’s sled or soaring through the clouds in her flying machine, conjuring up bracing winds or gentle breezes. She’d once seen Selene challenge Lord Milori to a race on owlback, and she could’ve sworn he’d cracked a smile.
It made Periwinkle think of the story from the storybook, about the fairy who’d run out of pixie dust and found her way home with a pair of seven-league boots. In a way, she thought, Selene had found her own seven-league boots.
There was no way to go back. But she’d learned how to go forward.
Even without wings that could fly, Selene was a fast-flying fairy. Even changed, she was still herself.
Weaver waited near the Pixie Dust Well, Legs sitting openly on his shoulder and weaving a decorative little patch on his raven-feather waistcoat. They were so close to the place he’d taken Periwinkle the very first night he’d met her. He hoped she was already there, waiting with her friends.
Everything had changed since that night. He knew who Periwinkle really was, down to her heart.
And the whole Winter Woods was about to learn a little bit more about Weaver.
Nerves pricked his stomach like pins in a pincushion as he flew to join everyone.
But Weaver felt a contented light spark inside him as he took in the scene around the well—what was there, and what wasn’t.
There was no damage to the well, no sign of the nightmare blight he’d planted to frighten Periwinkle into going along with him.
Though the entire Winter Woods seemed to be waiting when he got there, he spotted her immediately.
He glanced past the animal-talents, the light-talents, the helping-talents, all grouped around the Pixie Dust Root and the well.
Dougal sat with the healing-talents; Selene, once again, sat with the fast-flying-talents.
Periwinkle sat on a sculpted snowflake alongside the other frost-talent fairies, close to the rest of the nature-talents, eyes lit with happiness as she talked to Gliss and Spike.
When Lord Milori dismounted from his owl’s back and called for everyone’s attention, the winter fairies fell into silence, anticipation settling over them all like the sun sinking over the horizon.
And as the first stars winked awake in the sky overhead, Weaver flew down to join the Winter Woods fairies, arriving for the second time.
Before him, the Pixie Dust Well glittered gold beneath the silver starlight. Around it, icons of all the fairies’ various talents rested on little plinths for him to consider.
All the talents—and now, one more. No longer alone, no longer a strange exception. A lost talent, found.
He began his ceremony.
Hands behind his back, Legs waiting patiently on his shoulder, Weaver walked from one symbol to another.
He passed over the icicle, the bit of glacier, the little tornado of the fast-flying fairies, the symbols of other talents.
With a lump in his throat, he picked up the needle that had represented his craft-talent for so long.
The needle had been enchanted by Lord Milori, just as all the other symbols had. But it sat in Weaver’s hands, unchanged, unresponsive.
Finally, he came to the spider.
Everyone could see the strange, luminous color of dreams in its small, fuzzy body, the depth of midnight in its liquid black eyes. This wasn’t Legs; this was another spider—one of many who’d caught a ride back from the Bobbin Wood workshop.
It had been easy enough. Weaver was there every week, and the dream creatures were curious to see the beautiful world beyond the Drift.
When Weaver stopped before the spider’s plinth, the little creature leapt into the air, trailing spider silk as he and Legs together wove a little crown of it over Weaver’s head. A burst of light like the aurora shone around Weaver himself then, glowing and radiant as a dream.
Periwinkle’s gasp was the loudest, the most excited, and when Weaver met her eye, his insides sparked and flared with joy. He felt helplessly happy, sagging with relief, peace, and rightness right down to the tips of his wings.
“Our first dream-talent in centuries!” Lord Milori called in a loud voice, and the winter fairies cheered.
Weaver didn’t wait to fly into Periwinkle’s arms.
His new life had already started—had begun a matter of days after he and Periwinkle had rescued everyone at the Hall of Winter. But the Arrival ceremony was public, a matter of record for Pixie Hollow. It was a joy to know, and be truly known.
But the ceremony wasn’t over yet.
Weaver held Periwinkle close, and she rested her head on his shoulder as two other fairies moved to hover beside Lord Milori.
Spruce had been an icicle-talent, and Anise—Anise, who had turned out to be shorter than Periwinkle, much to Spangle’s dismay as she’d been sewing her gown—had been a baking-talent, but both of them had felt talentless for a long time.
In the days after the chaos at the Hall of Winter, both had gone to Weaver, asking him about the stories they’d begun seeing in their minds by night after they fell asleep.
Both Spruce and Anise took a turn walking through the plinths. Both of them saw the spider leap for joy as they got close, saw a brilliant explosion of color as the dreams claimed the two fairies as their own.
The Winter Woods welcomed the dreaming talent and the new dream-talent fairies. Their new friends, who’d felt lost for so long.
They belonged.
They always had.
The months drifted by in days of snowfall and diamond-clear, sparkling-cold nights. Periwinkle passed the spring and early summer resting with her friends, and the late summer and early fall stretching and strengthening her frost-talent once again.
Weaver spent his days and nights alike in dreams.
So much had changed since his frustrated days at Floss’s, unsure even how to talk to his colleagues.
These days, he, Spruce, and Anise were thick as thieves; they’d brought back to life the workshops in the Bobbin Wood, the Sapphire Mine, and Snow Globe Mountain, as well as the ones in Woolgathering Glade and Threadneedle Thicket.
The three of them could be found there most days, their work and play as indistinguishable as with any fairy of Pixie Hollow.
They had repaired broken dream tools, relearned old techniques, and completed more than one project left undone on the abandoned workbenches; they’d read every page in the Snow Globe Mountain library, and even spun a few new theories with the Keeper about how best to give beautiful dreams, or to keep them forever.
By night, Weaver had dreams of his own, most of them good, the occasional outlier sad or strange.
But the safety of his waking life gave him peace the moment he opened his eyes.
His headaches were long gone. And though his work kept him away from Periwinkle sometimes, it also brought him more joy than he’d ever thought possible.
More wonder and curiosity than he could ever have expected.
And Periwinkle felt the same way about him, and the world they now shared.
Trust was never a mistake. Forgiveness was always an option.
And nothing—not magic, or the truth, or love, or the chance to choose kindness—was ever truly lost.
When Periwinkle woke up to a knock at the door, she couldn’t quite remember what she’d been dreaming.
It had been something about the border between Winter and Autumn—about a thread bound to her heart that constantly tugged her there. She knew she’d been looking for someone there, or something.
But she’d woken up with her thoughts in a muddle. She couldn’t remember the dream, and anyway, she was preoccupied.
The next day, they were due to go back to the Mainland.
Periwinkle rubbed at her eyes as she made for her entryway. But when she reached it, Weaver was already inside. Dream blankets and dream talismans spilled out of his pockets and his bag on the floor, and Legs scrambled over them, looking for something, his little body a light in the dark.
Weaver, finally home from Snow Globe Mountain again. Periwinkle could feel herself smiling. “You couldn’t wait for me to get the door?” she asked.
Weaver grinned back at her. “Too much to do,” he said. “Remember, we leave in the morning.”
Using his talent made Winter a more peaceful place, a more magical place. Now, for the first time, Weaver would be taking the peace and the magic alike across the Never Sea.
Periwinkle could hardly wait.
His cheeks were flushed from flying, his hands drenched in dye and moonlight, and as she crossed the floor to him he was already talking to her—something he’d read in one of Stella’s old journals and finally, finally understood.
There were stars in his eyes. There were dreams in his pockets.
And a moment later, there was Periwinkle in his arms, where she knew she would always find herself.