Page 77 of Barbie: Dreamscape

But it looks completely different.

The land is no longer glimmering pink. It’s dark, as if all brightness has been leached away. The only thing left are the shadows, and they’ve lengthened, left to roam and reign.

I swallow, getting to my feet.

The rainbow above the town is now just a chain of rain clouds. A storm begins to form, as if echoing my thoughts. The air has turned to a chill, as if mimicking the frostiness in my chest, the coldness of my now-shattered heart.

I walk through the silent streets, back to the fountain, which has gone dry. Lune isn’t there. No. There are people, but their faces are cloaked in shadows. All of them are frowning, eyes to the ground.

The once pink path is now as dark as raven feathers. I follow it all the way to the bridge, which is still there—only now, it’s made of bones.

Dread sinking through me, I follow it down, back to the arch, back to where I fell from the sky and—

That’s changed, too.

The cloud in front of the arch hangs heavy with rain. Instead of Dreamland, it now says, Nightmareland.

Instead of Enter here, it says, Enter if you dare.

I swallow as the rain cloud disappears in a sputter of water.

Normally, I might feel indignation, outrage at this world for turning on me so quickly, for having a shadowy underbelly so ready to rise up and swallow me whole.

But all I feel is—yes. This is good. This land reflects how I feel right now. I belong within it.

Slowly, I pivot and start back across the bridge. I make my way through the darkened town.

A woman shoves by me, pressing a flyer to my chest without asking if I want it, before trudging on. It’s an invitation.

Pity Party 5 p.m., it says.

I bristle. Crumble the invitation into a ball and throw it.

I’ll have my own pity party right here and now, thank you.

My life is a lie!

The shame and embarrassment and pain of being left Fateless crashes into me in full force, the memories cutting and heavy. She did that. She humiliated me in front of everyone. She saw me suffer afterward. She comforted me. And the entire time, she was the cause of it.

She made me feel worthless. And angry. And hopeless.

On purpose.

A sob rips through my chest. Something uncurls in the wind above me, fluttering until it falls right against my cheek, stuck to the tears there. A tissue.

I look up and see that instead of a line of streetlamps, there are tissue boxes stuck to poles.

Practical.

Something worse than sadness overtakes me. Anger, flashing hot, sears through my veins.

Robin has been lying to everyone in Heartland, telling us the Fates control our futures when, in fact, it’s been her all along.

She lied to me about my mother, never telling me about her magic, never suggesting there could be magic inside me, too.

She hid these things from me, these truths central to my very existence, and even in the midst of my outrage I can’t help but wonder why.

Did she want to be the only one with magic? Was she afraid that one day I would discover what lived inside my blood and threaten her control—of me, of Swancrest, of all of Heartland—with it?