Page 21 of Barbie: Dreamscape

It’s followed by another, louder scraping.

It sounds like something is trying… to escape?

I crane my neck forward, leaning over the desk. It’s coming from the other side of it.

Robin might be my guardian, and the closest thing to family I’ve ever known, but she’s still the Headmistress of Swancrest. I probably shouldn’t be in her office alone.

I definitely shouldn’t be on the other side of her desk.

Or reaching toward the bottom drawer that is shaking so violently that the brass knob is trembling.

“Barbie.”

I jump up from my crouched position, and there is Robin. Standing in the doorway to her office. Frowning.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

I glance down toward the drawer. The jolting has, of course, stopped.

“Oh, I… I thought I…” I what? Heard a noise? Was about to break into her personal property? “Never mind.” I stagger back around the desk. Robin’s expression shifts from slightly irritated to concerned.

“Are you feeling okay?”

She reaches out as though to touch my forehead and test for fever, but I take a step back. No. I’m not okay. My mind is spinning with questions, and I think I might lose it if I don’t get answers. “Robin, what are the other lands outside Heartland, beyond the mists?”

At my words, the color seems to drain from Robin’s glowing skin. “Why would you ask such a thing?”

I frown. “Well, I—”

She steps forward. “Are you not happy here? Have I not given you a good enough life?”

“Of course you have,” I say quickly. “That’s not what I was saying, just—”

Before I can finish my thought, Robin is taking my clammy hands in her cool grasp. Her tone softens. “I’m sorry,” she says, squeezing my fingers. “There are dangers beyond the mists, Barbie, you know that. They… they’re the reason your mother…”

She doesn’t have to finish that sentence. I didn’t know my mother, but the memory of her is everywhere, from the statue of her in her armor to my face whenever I look in the mirror. I’ve been told our resemblance is uncanny.

But the land revealed on the wall didn’t look all that vicious. It looked almost like here, at least from all the pink I saw.

“What about Dreamland?” I ask before I lose my nerve.

And her eyes widen. “How did you—what—”

“I saw it in the library. There were pieces of some old map on a wall, and—”

I’ve never seen Robin look so terrified. “Don’t ever say that name again,” she says, a vein pulsing in her forehead. “Forget anything you saw.”

“But—”

“Please,” she says, and her voice is so full of emotion that I close my mouth.

Her office door swings open, and I jolt. Her birds are there, chirping in a language only she understands. Robin sighs before turning back to me. “I’m needed downstairs. Please, Barbie. Promise me. Don’t go looking for trouble.” She squeezes my hand one final time, then she’s gone.

I turn to follow her out of her office, not looking for trouble, just as she asked me to.

But something stops me, like a hook in my mind.

I’ve always been obedient.